■ W<i 


rurWoinK' 

ffi 'I riS’ y, •.f%fyiM 

'»< > • M 

1 I ^>1* , > .»^ t • ffJiH (/t>l 

|»l}t i > I i I ^/■^l 

I I lii » f » 'lUv*. »< I 

Ml,«f * • M » nf )4 1 

*i *‘ \> t ■ 1 1 r, t$i: I It, t 
» ■ iM-r * i *•'• ' J ) t . 1 1 j iH- 
f•>^; t I i ■• t J< I ; ' i 5'l*. * ♦; 

> ' >' ii cti ' t ( I j »>i , *1 1 j 

i ) rj r ' 1 1 •!•(«<»'< r 

•v4‘ * ■< * I » ; IIH . >1* 


* 

fkt > 1 1 


.. 

• tV'L , 
'•’■!**• uyhfii^i 
» '(J* 

i I ' » > . J * . > , i » T • ( u 

>1 I , <. 1^. i . /, » .»/ 


JT) n ;m 1 1' < p ' f ' ‘ M i » ‘ ' till' 


If * • I /* U / UM < ^ ' I M ,1 i<r;|,jV 

I ; J j H J ( '• 1; 1 1 I ' 1 1 I <> • < • t 1 1 f ; < 1 1 t) } ) 

• rW I, , \ ,, 

>/ • » > '^j ■ I i I J ; » • I I I j , , . / ; , » . |,j • 

l:t7%.,..4. .» tfvj 

„J>v.-r< » M» f; » *f t. > ' ‘ f.*, . ■ / 1 . ' - . , > i .t < I ,i /» t u. i 

» jl-jr <■/»!«' i,t,< . j, > j,l » , . i , »i Ml i j , j, .| 

S'jjlV'i '// ' ‘H .III ■ V*' ' i '* »• ’ “f* ).i M. i. wi-j 1 


I •! - >«».*,< I f 1 . 1 iW'Vi uW>4 f >ri l> 1 1 ». i ,i 
rww^H ‘ I ‘ '1 : 1 M.iik-/*! f I • I 

' ,k 


I • H* H 1 1 J. I ’ I » I f-r . t - I I • •♦. »f * » , » Kt , ^ ^ ,,,J jl j ». I J n I >l{ 11 ljr. 


f*y r'^t 

!! *. f f * * ^V!!! f! **■*’ ''•* • I ^ fi I 111". I * - ».* j » • i.ii *y I, j Li.ioMM.iii/Jii; 

» 'i •»-».*,, »,f » '.*♦•, r.^• r.i .».».»« i ,,;4 ifj ».>< I ! M fj I If '•ni 

i-i. » , , , , 1 1 1^1 ii» V I ( iM »i- ' 1 iiM-i 1 1 ' J< III j n t ' 

ri ; > i. Ill' r. ^ f I. i,.*. i, »,V, , J -hni^wi 


f* 


' 1 ' 1 - < , » 


. . I ■. . •»> »;»» r !».■ »)I - 

. I > 1 } . I ll'i » ») 1 ^, 1 |t •• I { r l< > I !•• I ,1 < I |< 1 1 !/>■ i I i ) I ■ / , i| 

*•*-. I 'f * ’!» <■.! • n ►< ». 4 n I j f -V m A>» 1 1 

If I M ' I I II j/. I ll^M • 111 • !■« » ill f. 4 j 

» f i I • f ' 1* ^Ml If II I y »| i . 1, 1 1 J .li i-J *1 


tl . 1 i 




n. ilU-Ilf 
"'ll t:ii 
'f!i 
'I n »j 
' I? mJ 


• - 'I * i»i 

> ' » 1 I 1 » I I > > t' iMili ». |l 4 I k i. 1. 1 . Ii 1 . 1 . I <4 »fii 

: I ( J i 'I ll t : vn » J ■♦ l>. I fj . fl^lll 

fi r> - I » - », I. » . >f*. ►.f ' ‘ ' 1 > lii yl' 

III* f f «, i>f n i-j k :h I f t >lii>l 

jMi I . M >/» I *. 1 1 ( 11 -^ 1 ^ I ii)Ti iiui.y}' 

I ' " - ' . I i ( 1 I, 111 ^f|i 1 1 1 M *1-1 1 , i I itiiii 

' • ' I'l If. ». i) tui 111' H.Vi 1-1' > 

' ■ ■ I I ’ )»• - J nj , .M. V / 1 If iMinimiy III Ml 

' ' ' • ' ‘ ■ ^1 1 • ' .*> J , 1 ,1 • V* < j ri >1 ■ I*. 1^1 ►' I) ' 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 M 

■ , I 1 1 1 ' 1 1 1 f I • I I'l ■ ; ; (1 J •> » 1 i/» M- ' If I f ..^Mi I • v* '*M '1 iM -ffy 

Ml !iiiMi>i|ii',i>,-;iin fUiiiii.r » ,.!,» i.fi-SA/'^ 

f tUl.f!! IIU > J Ij I jU till Jl !H 1 1 1 1 i.nn .1 ill l.-Ml ♦M-ii ■ 

‘ '|||>»>»i?r«'MiMiji.r«i.'itnoiif I * ufh - *. 1,. .-f* ” 


l» f fl'ii ll»li l,,^! If^l-yyi *^> .'i . I , ;«i»J 

Im; j fiJii 




lyinMiin I . I : . n>i ji / J 
liilfilf lU' I" r ».l' 'll f yMf, III !Ui '•' 
'/ Jlllfl J ! J I 'IJI i t 1 . 1. 1 liijli ij 
J fi f 111,1 1 1 ; I III II (t I . »• / .i 

•yi **f ' > - f »' ' I ' ' I • I i»i»)ry*r ” 

ltrl>. ».,•!» » J. ». •• > . 1 4 MliJ/y J 

[iry ill II » , I ,1,1:11' If I . 

<> •;,,«* I fl "' *• • I • ■ y <• *Al 

VHlM'f I r . . , ,, I, t; ♦Ii.i.ki tii 
ffikjl ; I ; If . I ' I ti I » . I .>i»;>/f 1^^ 


,)kJl I !/► If 1 • f 1 , Ml fl) 

I . f 1 * If • M > ’ ‘ " If I 

. f.f f I . ji I" 1 n • 

; ,vf..ifcjr Mf f J'Mf l|».M:l|.,*|l 

‘ * ’ ' * IwTfWipAf * r I ‘ I n f rf ' I J.J/I 111 f »l » I WV/ 

• > . , , IJ ? fVtf'ilil |,Hl i.lil.*il«fMjlH,^,^fir 

' • : fliffyAllil.l • lit) I J , f I J > 1 '■ill f »» • r I 1 I i 11 ^* f l>, 
'f ■ f Hjini. t f j... 1 , 1 . 

’ ' .Mf- '(iJo/ ’ll 'If unf »1 Hrjfiiifjlj 

>; I I 1 ,. 




' nn 


fjTA*' 


' ■ t I VJ 




f ti f • t . >f 1 1 f » 1 1 .ii>i*-f I, 

■fii f jiul 'h r" 'f ir ".• J f 
^*r/n>; f ( r / /• j I nf f • i 'J' (.'f i't»n^m4W 

» .fii! f »; Hf M O" »^*Ti |i I 

liaHrt i.- ' k. 


» ' • • ' I » %- 

I * •■*:', j '1 

.f - • * - 0 * • 

• . » • •'i 

g* • * /' I • • 

tf« • ^ < I # 

I,'.' 


nifk 
» Ij ‘ •.■* 
4<H>yk 
;♦ Hun 

•1 Iffy I 

P 

Vif 

-T>M|r 


yfn.' , . 

fM' ^ 

kt I f ( f • i r 1 i ; 

i ihf| f .' liWJilM 
kMif.i'fMh.KMiT 
».■ ». M f 

If lA • V^f y li 


tinVf I 








i» irt 


- tuir 


Uif f 


'f>W» )' 


CKi 

|/l«l M»/t HH1| i ljJ^ 

, f «'• ' I I'lj ).f ni-i*j , 

lAijf-iHf rr h-f 

'fill -I 

■Iwir 




I 













ClassZXa- 
r. a , 6- Y37? .{ 

Giyrightl^’?. Ti. ■ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 


■ '-I . 

. ‘ >1* ■ 

' ■ t ^ 


















I 























Will H . G reen/ield 




RING AND 
DIAMOND 


BY 

WILL H. GREENFIELD 



The cook publishing company 

ATHOL, MASS. 

igai 



■ J 


APR 13 1921 


^CU611596 


• i 

* >■ 


■ ^ , 





V 







V ri 


/m 












.' r'** . . it-y 

n 



. ‘j ' •• ' < 

^ ' J • • • 





I. 







iehtrattnn 


TO MY ANGEL WIFE 

Alma iigrtlp 

{Died February i6, igzd) 

without whose loving 'aid a7td encouragement this book 
would have remahied an unrealized dream ^ 

AND 

TO MY SAINTED SISTER 

iJIalipl 

{Died November zy, igzo) 

the loyal and self-sacrificing chum who took Alma's 
place until Death struck again^ 

This volume is reverently and affectionately dedicated by 

THE AUTHOR 


December 24, 1920 


ACKNOWLEDGMENT 


The author gratefully acknowledges his indebted- 
ness to the following publishers for permission to 
republish in book form; 

The Frank A. Munsey Company 
The Richard K. Fox Company 
The Street & Smith Corporation 
Doubleday Page & Company 
Pennsylvania Grit Pub. Company 
The Shortstory Publishing Co. 

W. D. Boyce Company 
Spprting Life Publishing Co. 


CONTENTS 


Tales , of the Diamond 

Grayson’s Ghost ^ 

An Aeronaut of the Diamond 15 

Won, In a Walk 31 

The Honorable Out 41 

The Last Man Up 53; 

The Busher Belligerent 65, 

Wit, Wind and Victory 75, 

The Quitter S3 

' A Blond Frorh the Bushes 97 

The Sneeze Play 113 

Almost a Hero 123 

The Iron Man 129 

Fate and a Foul 141 

When Stratton Took the Pledge 155 

The Last Hunch of Bobby Sowers 173 

A Scrap of Paper 183 

The Superman of the Slab 195 

Tales of the Ring 

Butch Dinker’s Knockout 213 

When the Sandman Came Around 221 


All Primed ! . 231 

When the White Hope Fled ' 241 

For Good Measure . . . . ; 251 

Handled Without Gloves ^ 263 

Oblivion For One 277 

Framed for the Ninth 287 

If at First You Don’t Succeed 297 

Advice From the Corner 307 

The Stab of Suspicion 317 

Going the Limit 33v^ 

A Manufacturer of Champions 345 . 

The Diving Venus : 355 




) : V 




► 


*/: - 


^ A 


' ^ \ 


>■“ 

* ''/ • '■’ 
V ^ 

* ' ' I ' 


; ' ■ l' JyWj 




■ ■ ; ^ ' 

pr^:'' 


< ' ,'■ 

‘'i \:y . 


■>■ ■■■'>(' '■ 4 Av'j'''f-'!.' 


•v^^’V 

■ -4^'pi: 

ixi 

'■ .P 

■ J,,.''. 

1* .1 * ' 

‘ ♦ |p *' 

li P ! 

'.' y '. 

•S *S/ . 1 

.>'• VI 

.' p^r.l-.V 





• ' i 


/,■' 


.t-.' 




■p^ 






r'' ■' ... .V .• ■■ V 

': ■• /'• • •■' • - ^ ' i ...P)' ' .1 

'Vv-i . 

V'Vw... 

.".'A 'fri- 1-,V, ■'■; . 

.';i ^ ■ 

; /'■'••.- 1 <■'. - ' ' ■ 

i' 'If ' 

V .V''/ .. ■; ^ 


• •■ t, 


- 'Mm 


*1*; >.' "L ' ••. r,i - V'.' .' • ‘k !■ . ' I*. ,• .' I 

ifKF y*!. t.4 jlf'.'Pi'i ti' ;i' • 7 ' , .. > >.1 

• V it..'.-:. ' > ■•• , '“p ’ ■' 

ntyii'lCil >f.Knlf ’ f ' V »' / .‘•- p I ’ ' ' • • - h' .- -^ : ■ ' • ■ , 

'{ ''v^- '■■' p- '-• I '■' ,.'■ 

': '-vI-::' & ■' '' 


W . . ; ' 1 ' H. V ■ 

■■'■-' '- '■ 

' ■■"'H.i: 

-• .L<v<' y vP’ 


f 

p 7- • 




t, 


1. 

. ' .1.- 


-. * 


4 ' 


\ < 

I 




.. r 


\ ■ ■ I 

S ■ 


• 1 


■''-j 


' . 


t . 


►r.-i ' , * I , 


''A> 


Yl ■ ■ 


. V • 


HStWi ■ 4 l* '«,''' ^ o''. • '. ^' < , ■ ; .» ' ' 1 / 0 ' ‘ ’* . 

■ '■••:' - V*' ■ •' . ■■ 


r 




v-V »J.- 

4 



•' 4 ' ‘ ' J' 

: 1 / . P' ' 

■■ y-. 


I 


. .' L ' ■ ' 

-•> ’ I 


[Yvtp’'^!i •'■• 
j’tf.K-'Cif'-:- ' ■ 

V.' ' 

W^ y ■ 

i'‘^pj£.“ ; '^-p'^’v ’ ‘ 

•■ ,’ 7' 




I • ■. . '. I •• 

I..,.. -■',•■•• • 
,<• • - -■ '• 


\ ■ : 

• I. 

T 1 


I 't > 

<r;.= 


* ' I ' ' f. '. 


'■ '.r, •' ..,.■ .-p-'.'^ '-V '. '•.; 

^:v.’ 7- ' 




i ^ 


-.'■Af-, 


' > .'• 



■ ‘ •>,'^‘-«p 
■ ■•«■’■ ■' f ■ ■' ■ 


1 - 


0.1 OV .■ ■ 


» 

‘ w' ,- 


'.' V- 


/ 


.-•f 

f , 


.; -p • -p' ' 'O''- . , ■ -I ;.v ' 

'■p "' ■ ■''p' ".’i p' • '' ^/ Ml' ■ 'W 

'■ ■ "‘ '■i''V:,'iV-p ■p-A 

. • ■■.;•■ •■: ' ■■ ■ ’V.' ,. W/'-“'p -;^4 







• * I- 




\ . ' 

1 V 


^ '• 


\ 


-t 


>7 * 


^'vv|v,, v"'.;, .V, 


...•'.: • ■ ■ • ■ ■ ■ .'^ ■•■ ' ■.' ■ .■■'V.;vr.^ .. ■ ... 

• ■ •■ ■ ,. ■•;- . p:' '• ■ ■ *■ 

■»■' ■•- •• ■ ii- ' ' '•■^' ‘j-- 

■ - -v: ■" ■ - ■■■'■ ■ -- 

.'•■ • ',•■■' . 'I ,.v.' , : ...V, Pji .,*), ^jP, ..•>;• 7 ;:'...' ■ . ■ 

■OV/i: 

' ' *■ - ;. ‘ ■ -v , '■', i • '■ >:< ■/,'■•■-. 

^ /■'. -■ ' V ' ■■ ■ 

, - ■•• .'.• • • . ■ • •.-: - ?j>' •' 

', ■ p . .r pf .1/ • . . . . 


p I 


•< 


k ■ 4 .y^ 

. it 
.■yy- 


y 


>♦■ . 


< ! 


, ( 


-l-i - 

,, ,, .% V 


■ . . ‘I • 


y 






yy’>'r‘: y ■ 

*fVi:"p.V'P|-. • '., p.p'-0..„, - . • ■ . . r-'S-p .\',p • 


■f 




/ 
I c 


'VJ 


;• 


•). : 


* » . ll '■ 


1 . 


< .'■ ■ 


f 


./pp.*' ' 


/ 

1 ' 


• CP,' ‘ I' ■ 

*» . 


. . I ' 




. ! 


. V . 

^ . . ... , . 

|«|;Vi’fcSp.'' p'" Ip ppP . pO:v 




I'p^ >’ 


.''’•'.v •'%■■■■ • • • . 


' y p 


- c' 










«* • 


TALES sT 


DIAMOND 

■ t 





\ 


f 


■N 


V 


ML 







# 


/ 

f 




rp 











/ 


I 




/ 



\ 


% 








N 













ff 



I 


\ 


# 



% 


f 





m 


•/; 


> 





1 



*1 


> 


« 


^ 


r* 


I 


f 


Jt. 


K 


/ 



✓ 



Grayson’s Ghost 


CHAPTER I. 

A Rival Appears 

Billy Grayson was Harry Singleton^s chum. A pair 
of better outfielders than these two never played on the 
Monarchs ; it is arguable whether Grayson was ever in the 
same class with his warmest friend and admirer, but, 
according to Singleton, Billy was infinitely superior in 
every department of the game. 

Grayson was not greatly beloved by those who knew 
him, and to -many whose friendly greetings he returned 
-with a nod of indolent condescension the worshipful atti- 
tude of Harry Singleton was positively comic. They 
knew that Billy was as modest and self-effacing as a 
prima donna; that he bossed the Monarchs absolutely; 
and that he had never been caught lugging around such 
impedimenta as a soul and a principle. 

Time was when they waited upon his nod; but that 
was in the brave days when he was a star of the first mag- 
nitude and captain of the team ; when he punched re- 
cruits in the nose for disobeying his orders, assaulted the 
manager with a chair, berated umpires, and persuaded the 
rest of the world that the only way to keep on good terms 
with his august self was to apologize incessantly for being 
right. Then he lost the captaincy, along with some of 
his old-time speed and “pep,’^ and took his place in the 
ranks again, as pugnacious as of yore, but lacking author- 
ity and friends. 


4 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Singleton came to the Monarchs during the Grayson 
regime. Ignoring and ignored by the other playdrs, he 
somehow captured Grayson’s fickle fancy, and his base- 
ball career became as serene as that of a village postmas- 
ter. Despite the vast dissimilarity between the two, they 
became inseparable. As Dick Price, the aggressive, iron- 
fisted shortstop, had it, Grayson furnished the fighting 
and Singleton the admiration and applause. 

Billy Grayson apparently thought life too full of 
earnest endeavor to waste on cultivating ordinary social 
amenities, so that no one was surprised when he refused 
to speak to Tillman, the new utility outfielder, who had a 
tinge of utility naivete in his manner and always spoke 
his fine and honest soul right out in meeting, with a fine 
disregard for tradition and convention. 

“That yap won’t last long enough to get a civilized 
hair cut,” Grayson told Harry Singleton. “Don’t worry 
about' his getting your job. He’s too green to bum.” 

But Grayson’s disfavor could no more check the prog- 
ress of Peter Tillman than he could retard time by hold- 
ing the pendulum of a clock. It so happened that Till- 
man got his first chance in a game through a slight in- 
jury to Billy himself, and he made one of the most re- 
markable hitting records of the season. He hit the 
sphere for four savage two-base cracks, and fielded his 
position faultlessly. He drove home eight mns and 
scored three himself; his extraordinary slugging person- 
ally deciding the issue in favor of the Monarchs. 

When Grayson heard the players join the press and 
public in singing the praises of the utility man, he had 
difficulty marshaling his thoughts into coherent sequence. 

“They tell me this bird that played left field in my 
place yesterday is a world beater,” he said to Harry Sin- 
gleton. “I get it from the papers that he romped over 
into your territory and stole a few outs from you.” 

“He handles himself well for a beginner,” conceded 
the center fielder, “but he never saw the day he could 
fill your shoes, Billy.” 


GRAYSON’S GHOST 


5 


The next day Captain Tommy Shevlin hid a huge 
grin as he informed Grayson that he would have to do 
bench duty until they saw whether the new-comer's de- 
moniacal hitting was only a flash in the pan. 

^‘That’s great stuff to pull on me, Tommy," com- 
plained Billy bitterly. “Only last week I worked two 
days with a bad ankle because you thought you had no- 
body to take my place. Now you play a green man and 
keep me warming the bench. He doesn’t' know where to 
play for the batters like I do, dpes he?" 

“No, but he can learn if he keeps up slaying the 
ball," was Captain Shevlin’s unsympathetic rejoinder. 

That day Peter Tillman played a whirlwind game in 
all departments. His batting was especially strong, and 
his fielding did not suffer by comparison with the work of 
the artist in center field, Harry Singleton, than whom 
there were few better outfielders. 

“Can’t beat that guy for luck," Grayson informed all 
within earshot. “If he fell in the gutter, he’d catch a 
fish." 

In the days that followed, Tillman stayed in the 
game, and was fast becoming the idol of the fans. He 
kept up his hitting, and covered the left-field zone like a 
blanket mortgage, fielding safe hit’s sharply and throwing 
the ball like a shot. 

Billy Grayson took bench duty hard and did not 
attempt to disguise his feelings. His whole attitude 
spoke of utter desolation, but' he never warmed to his 
successor. On the contrary, he teased and derided him 
in a shameful manner. 

“I’ll be back in that left garden when you’re back 
on the ice wagon!" he snarled. Cold and hard as a chip 
of glacier ice, he would not admit that in belittling Till- 
man he was showing a callous disregard of the right’s of 
others; he seemed to feel that the new man’s presence in 
the Monarchs’ outfield made him a figure for the “time 
of scorn to point his slow, unmoving finger at." 


6 


RING AND DIAMOND 


CHAPTER II 
In The Last Inning 

Tillman was a curiously unperturbed and patient 
victim until one day the undisguisedly hostile Grayson 
overstepped the bounds of decency. He waited till the 
team were all dressed and ready to leave the clubhouse. 
Then he spoke to Captain Shelvin. “I’m going to lick 
that fellow, captain,” he said quietly. “I’m a new man, 
but all I ask is an even break.” 

“The boys will see that you get it,” Shevlin assured 
him, and fled before the approaching storm so that disci- 
pline should not force him to interfere in the interests of 
peace and good will. , 

Billy Grayson evidently did not expect Tillman to do 
battle. At any rate, Grayson was crushingly defeated, 
and the victor hailed as a simon-pure, hundred-proof, 
government-stamped, triple-X fighter. It must be said 
for Billy that the contest he waged was absurdly beneath 
his demonstrated skill and established talents. In the 
beginning, his science opened the way for victory, but he 
failed to seize the golden moment and never got another 
chance. 

Harry Singleton took the view that Tillman had com- 
mitted an unwarrantable impertinence in thrashing his 
friend and idol, and presented himself as a candidate for 
a dose of the same medicine. The cyclonic Peter did 
not leave his wants ungratified, and when the knock-out 
came the most lenient of critics would have been obliged 
to state that Harry was no improvement over his prede- 
cessor. Tillman’s duplex victory was popular enough, 
and everybody on the team who had been eager to show 
him fair play hailed him as a person qualified by nature 
to form an opinion worth taking into account. 

But next morning the sporting world received a 
shock. Billy Grayson had been found dead in his room 
in a down-town hotel. He had blown out his brains after 
an all-night debauch. It came out at the coroner’s in- 


GRAYSON’S GHOST 


7 


quest that' he had long shown signs of mental retrogres- 
sion and had lost heavily speculating in wildcat stocks. 
Drink and failure to hold his place on the Monarchs had 
done the rest. 

Although Grayson was cordially disliked by nearly 
every man on the team, gloom settled over the Monarchs. 
It was a peculiarly difficult situation for Peter Tillman, 
but players and public made things easy for him, and, 
acutely recognizing his helplessness to better the state of 
affairs, he threw himself heart and soul into the game. 

Added to his value as a hitter and fielder, he devel- 
oped into a wonderful base runner. Before long the pub- 
lic arrived at the realization that he could do almost 
anything he attempted on a ball field. He became a fixed 
star in the baseball firmament, ever on the alert, and al- 
ways doing the unexpected. The steadiest and coolest 
man in the game in a crisis, his amazingly nimble brain 
never overlooked an advantage for his team. 

Harry Singleton played a good game of ball beside 
him in the field, but, after the death of Grayson, the two 
men never spoke. Harry retained an affectionate and 
grateful memory of Billy, and, while his actions did not 
fail to excite remark, it was useless for him to pretend 
a friendliness he could not feel. 

“I’m not' long for the big show any more,” Singleton 
said to Captain Shevlin. “I’ll do my best for the team 
while I’m on it, but I can’t tolerate that Tillman.” 

The Monarchs were on the home grounds, pla3dng 
the last and most important’ series of games with the 
Tigers. It was the last inning, and the Monarchs took 
the field with a lead of two runs. Two men were out 
and two on base. 

Captain Shevlin, noting who was coming to bat, mo- 
tioned Tillman back toward the fence. There was a 
sharp crack, and he saw a white speck mounting toward 
the heavens in left field. He congratulated himself on 
his good judgment in placing Tillman for the ball; then 
he watched it reach the crest of its arc, hover uncertainly, 


8 


RING AND DIAMOND 


and begin to fall. At the bottom of the arc was Tillman, 
sure death to a hit of this sort. 

Captain Shevlin started to walk off the field; then 
down bolted the ball, burst through Tillman^s hands, and 
rolled over the grass. Ah easy catch had been turned 
into a miserable error. Two runs were in by the time 
Tillman took a step after the ball, and then Singleton, 
who had raced across"^from center, swooped down on it 
and threw to the infield. But the batter had been alert 
and fleet, and with a long, plunging slide he beat the re- 
lay to the home plate and snatched a victory from the 
jaws of defeat. 

CHAPTER III. 

An Extraordinary Confession. 

As the tall, rangy, black-haired Tillman came up to 
him. Captain Shevlin noticed that his face was white as 
marble and that his hands trembled. “You don’t do 
that often, Peter,” said the captain, with a wry grin. 
“I could hardly believe my eyes at first.” 

“I could hardly believe my ears, cap,” said Tillman, 
panting, wetting his lips and speaking in a strangely 
husky voice. 

“Your ears! What do you mean, Peter?” 

Tillman seemed on the verge of tumultuous speech, 
but suddenly shook his head and walked off. 

Next afternoon he muffed three fli^s that should 
have been the easiest kind of outs. He seemed panic- 
stricken, and after the game, which was lost through his 
errors, he tremblingly asked Captain Shevlin for a private' 
interview. 

“Now let me have it straight,” said Shevlin kindly, just 
as soon as they were alone. “You’re not used to it, and 
it’s got your goat. Is that it?” 

“Used to it?” gasped Tillman. “Used to it?” 
Good heavens, man, I never can get used to itU What is 
it, anyhow?” 


GRAYSON’S GHOST 


9 


“Booze, of course. Ask me something easier.” 

“Cap, I haven't been drinking,” said Tillman plain- 
tively. “I couldn’t drink the stuff if I tried, and I mean 
never to try. It’s not that, Cap. It’s the ghost' of Billy 
Grayson !” 

Captain Tommy’s head went back with a rich, gurgl- 
ing laugh. “You’ve got them right,” he said, chuckling. 
“If Billy Grayson has a ghost. I’ll wager you’d be the first 
one he’d let' see it. But, seriously, Peter, you must cut 
it out.” 

“I didn’t expect you to believe me,” groaned Tillman 
despairingly. “But I know this much: either that left 
field is haunted by Billy Grayson, or I am going crazy.” 

Impressed by the man’s earnestness. Captain Shev- 
lin stopped laughing. “Tell me all about' it,” he urged. 

Tillman shuddered as if with a chill, and beads of 
perspiration started out on his forehead. “Just thinking 
about it gives me the creeps,” he said. “Every time I get 
set for a ball, I hear Billy’s voice in my ear, saying: ‘Look 
at your hands; my blood is on them!’ It is his voice, Cap, 
and out there in left field I am alone. I can see nothing, 
but over and over again, even when I am standing still in 
my position, I hear his voice saying the same thing: ‘Look 
at your hands; my blood is on them!’ ” 

Shevlin rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a minute. 
Tillman was haggard and unnerved, and looked as if he 
had just awakened from the confused horror of bad 
dreams. 

The captain was satisfied it was not strong drink. 

“We’ll see a doctor,” he said at length. 

But the doctor could throw no light upon the strange 
case other than to say guardedly that if Tillman were not 
a drinking man he was suffering from a most remarkable 
hallucination. Medicine and advice as to diet and exercise 
were the only attempt's the doctor made at a solution of 
the mystery. 

“Peter,” said his captain, “you know without my tell- 
ing you that the Monarchs have got a look-in for the pen- 


10 


RING AND DIAMOND 


nant tliis time, and you also know that you are a very 
valuable man. I want you .out there in left for us, but 
I want you there untroubled by ghosts. I don’t propose 
to let any ghost do us out of the pennant'. You were 
not afraid of Billy’ Grayson when he was living, and I 
think you kre going to get rid of the idea that he is 
haunting you'because you licked him in a manly fight be- 
fore he suicided. 

“You are a little too superstitious, Peter,” he con- 
tinued, “and you are a little too sensitive. You have al- 
lowed this thing to get on your nerves. You licked Billy 
Grayson in the flesh; now Pm backing you to lick his 
ghost. Go home for two weeks and take complete rest 
from every form of mental or physical exercise. And 
don’t think! Just loaf and eat and breathe. Then come • 
back to me, ready to play the game of your life, for I’m 
going to stick you out there in left' field and I’m looking 
for you to bring home the bacon for us.” 

CHAPTER IV. 

^ For The Last Time 

In his rural home, Tillman followed his captain’s 
instructions to the letter. It kept quiet enough where he 
was, and he resolutely kept his thoughts away from 
baseball and the Grayson tragedy. He came of a sturdy, 
reputable, and common-sense stock, and the feeling of 
peace and quiet about the old home was like that which 
envelops an abandoned graveyard. In a few days his 
career in the big league seemed all vague, incoherent, un- 
real — something that had happened in a dream. He did 
nothing in particular, but he did it very well. 

At the expiration of two weeks he presented himself 
to Captain Shevlin for inspection, without elation, and 
yet without reluctance. 

Shevlin’s keen eye raked him from head to foot. 
“You’ll do,” he decided. “You get into the game to- 
morrow, Peter. I’ve a notion we’ll need you.” 


GRAYSON’S GHOST 


ii 


On the morrow Peter was out in left field in a game 
against the Pirates. Without having had a fielding 
chance, he was first to bat in the second inning, and he 
ground his teeth as he heard the catcher chatter about his 
alleged weakness. 

“Here’s easy meat!” babbled the hard-working back- 
stop. “His lamps are still bleary from the booze. Make 
him hit it, Eddie! He can’t see them any more. He’s 
trying to use his rep to work you for a free pass. Stick 
’em over! Thatta boy!’ 

Tillman took two called strikes in moody silence. 
Then he caught a fast outshoot near the tip of his bat 
at a full, deadly swing, and plunged down to first yelling 
like a Comanche. The ball winged its way over the head 
of the center fielder, and Tillman cantered home before 
it could be retrieved and relayed to the infield. It was 
one of the cleanest and longest hits ever made on the 
home grounds. 

“Did you see me walk on my rep?” Tillman said, 
chuckling, as he passed the Pirate catcher on his way to 
the bench. “Tell Eddie to serve me the same thing the 
next time, please.” 

Captain Shevlin claf^ped him heartily on the back. 
“Were they playing with the buzz saw, Peter?” he asked, 
laughing. “These fellows seem to think you’re a booze 
fighter who had to be disciplined. Don’t mind them; 
you know better. You’re the old Peter again, boy, and I 
don’t want you to hear things when you get out there.” 

Another inning passed without offering a fielding 
chance to the sensational young fielder, and on his next 
trip to the bat he singled savagely down the right-field 
foul line. 

Up to the seventh inning the Monarchs had the 
game practically won, but in this frame the Pirates start- 
ed to hit, and then events came in startling succession. 

With a man on third base, a low, scorching liner was 
hit to left center, and both Tillman and Harry Singleton 

set out for it. They both got under way at the same mo- 
/ 


12 


RING AND DIAMOND 


ment, starting with the crack of the bat, and either could 
have made it a sure out, but Singleton swerved to one 
side at Tillman’s warning: ‘T have it!” 

Tillman’s eyes were strained on the flying sphere, 
and there were lines of stem control about his mouth. 
The ball thudded into his gove, and he was still on the 
dead run, when his hands suddenly jerked apart, the ball 
struck his knee, bounded up again, then up still farther 
as he batted it with his left hand and again with his right, 
until, racing at full speed and popping the ball up and 
down between his two hands like a toy ball on a fountain 
of water, he finally pulled up on third base, the ball 
clasped desperately against his breast with both hands. 
The runner was not five feet off the bag; he had been 
hypnotized by the amazing jugglery of the catch, and - 
so Tillman had made an unassisted double play and re- 
tired the side. 

Bleachers and stands rose en masse and cheered and 
yelled and danced and screamed. It was a circus catch 
they had not expected to see, and they meant to show 
their appreciation. 

Tillman walked straight up to Captain Shevlin, and 
the latter saw there was something amiss. His star 
fielder was shaking like a leaf, and there were tears, in his 
eyes and a desperate, unconquerable choking in his voice, 
“Take me out of the game. Cap,” he entreated, trying to 
hide the break in his tones. “It spoke to me when I 
made that bungling catch!” 

“Can’t you play the game out?” asked Shevlin help- 
lessly. 

“No, I’m through now. Cap. It’s not imagination. 
I’m as fit as I ever was in all my life, but I heard the 
ghost of Grayson just as I got my hands on that ball.” 

Pale as a specter, his hands clenching and unclench- 
ing, Peter Tillman, to the wonder and astonishment of his 
mates and the crowd, walked off the field. 

“Pulled a ligament in that breakneck juggling act,” 
Captain Shevlin informed the press, and thus it came out 


GRAYSON’S GHOST 


13 


in the papers the following morning, but Tillman was too 
dazed to read the accounts of the game; his mind re- 
coiled in horror from the memory of the ghastly words 
the ghost of Grayson had repeated: “Look at your hands; 
my blood is on them!” 

This was precisely the thing that robust common 
sense brushes aside as the veriest twaddle, but Tillman 
now owned a deep-seated and properly emphasized con- 
viction. He had played with the ghost of Grayson for 
the last time. Going to his room in the Junction Hotel, 
he proceeded to pack up his belongings preparatory to 
leaving the city for good. 

CHAPTER V. 

Far From a Joke. 

It was here that Captain Shevlin found Tillman at a 
little after nine o’clock that evening. “Greetings!” he 
cried gayly. “I have ventured to intrude because I am in 
search of some very important information.” 

“If you want to know when I am leaving ” 

Shevlin patted his lips to conceal a smile he disguised 
as a yawn. “I want to know if you will play to-morrow 
if I promise that the ghost of Grayson won’t bother you. 
In fact,” he went on, as he noted that Tillman was watch- 
ing him with penetrating eagerness, “I think I can safely 
say that the ghost of Grayson is no more ; in other words, 
I have laid the ghost.” 

Tillman fo-se from his task of stuffing a suit case, 
raising his eyebrows a little in surprise. “Cap,” he said 
gravely, “I hope you’re not joking, because this matter is 
far from being a joke to me.” 

“Me, too!” cried Shevlin heartily. “After the game 
today, Peter, I had a visit from an old friend of Single- 
ton’s. He said that Harry and he had been in vaudeville 
together some years ago, and that they had put on quite 
a good act which they called ‘The Talking Dog.’ Harry 
had written to this gentleman, saying that as his baseball 


14 


RING AND DIAMOND 


career was closing, he was thinking of going on the 
stage again. Hence our friend's trip to this city and his 
subsequent call upon me to learn where Singleton was 
staying. The upshof of the matter is that the ghost of 
Grayson is laid for evermore, and tomorrow, when you 
get in the game, Harry Singleton will be playing in right 
field instead of the garden next to your territory, where, 
by backing you up and going after the same hits, he al- 
ways had you within earshot.” 

Tillman’s fingers closed in a firm grip about his cap- 
tain’s outstretched palm. “I know now!” he cried hap- 
pily. “You mean ” 

“Harry Singleton is a ventriloquist of rare accom- 
plishments,” finished Captain Shevlin, “but next year he 
will be using his gift where it will be more appreciated.” 


o 



/ 


An Aeronaut 
of the Diamond 


Bob Grant couldn’t parse a page from Vergil, or 
square a circle, but when Rex Wiley plucked him from 
the bushes he could pitch baseball as easily as an emeritus 
president of Harvard could write a brochure on Egypt. 

The very first game he twirled for Wiley’s Cubs 
stamped him a pitcher of parts, for he proximated the 
outstanding record of Matchless Markley, and blanked 
the Titans with three tainted singles. It was a pitcher’s 
duel, with the scoreboard showing a double procession of 
naughts up to the ninth inning, when the Cubs managed 
to break their goose eggs and the colossal quiet which had 
settled down upon the spectators. — 

The feelings of Rex Wiley were expressed in the 
Dickens phrase, “Here’s richness!” His heart warmed to 
Grant as a man worthy to sit at meat with yeomen, for 
besides having all the “stuff” a star pitcher is expected 
to own. Bob owned the neatest balk motion that ever 
fooled an umpire. He would nod to the catcher, and 
start to lean forward and sideways, pulling the right foot 
into the air. This started the base runner off for sec- 
ond, if he was stealing; then, instead of throwing to the 
catcher. Bob would calmly toss the ball over to first base, 
slowly, as though he had made up his mind to do so at the 
start. The fact that there was no halt' to the way he 
wheeled and threw to first made his action look good, 
nothwithstanding that he jerked the right foot' off the 
ground. 


16 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“The slickest piece of stuff that has been pulled in 
the big leagues for an age,” was the terse comment of 
Wiley, who desired to be quoted as saying that his new 
marvel’s balk motion was as hard to catch as the agile and 
precipitate flea. 

Ewing Horan, manager of the Titans, also aired his 
opinion of Grant’s balk motion, and though Wiley did 
not approve of his language, he cheerfully conceded that 
it would be intensely interesting, if not illuminating, to 
hear Mr. Horan put up a stovepipe. The latter further 
intoned to the effect that Grant would not last long when 
he encountered “Slats” Hendrix, and other noted orators 
of the coaching lines. 

“Grant is dynamite,” opined the tactician of the Ti- 
tans. “He’s sensitive, thin-skinned, touchy; and when 
the coachers get a line on him he won’t be able to pitch 
pennies into a hogshead at three paces.” 

However, Bob Grant' won the next four games he 
pitched in impressive style, and immediately became an 
intersidereal luminary in the baseball Armament. He 
was picked for slab duty when his team inaugurated the 
baseball season in Quakertown, and showed marvelous 
form. 

Opening day in a big-league race is generally a tale 
of big crowds, frozen music, kinky-armed mayors, and 
scrubby baseball; but on this particular occasion it was a 
tale^f trenchant twirling. -Bobby shut out the Quakers 
with one little hit. Moreover, the hit was the flukiest 
kind of a scratch, an infield hopper that eluded the sec- 
and baseman; and this hermit lick came with two out in 
the ninth inning, leaving Grant’s teammates breathing fire 
and brimstone like the dragons of old. 

Twenty-four players in a row fell before the mani- 
fold resourcefulness of the new slab sovereign. He 
curved the Quakers to a pulp, fast-balled them to pieces, 
slow-balled them to death. The ball obeyed its young 
master with the deadly precision that the range finder 
brings a shell fired by a well-trained gun crew to its mark. 


THE AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


17 


The Quakers were no weaklings with the willow, either, 
and looking down their batting order was a great deal like 
taking a slant along Murderers’ Row. 

Wiley was deliriously happy; Columbus could not have 
been more wrought up over the discovery of a new 
world. He viewed Grant as the Heaven-sent medium 
through which he was to acquire a pennant and undying 
fame and make other leaders’ dreams of the pennant as 
empty as a drum. Grant’s flawless pitching had just 
about reduced the chances against his team to the vanish- 
ing point. 

Right at the pinnacle of pitching efficiency, when 
nothing short of an earthquake, or some other cataclys- 
mic visitation appeared virile enough to throw him out of 
his stride. Grant suddenly lost his cunning and every 
game he pitched. 

The wine of power was transformed into the water 
of weakness; the future became dark as the inside of a 
cow. The umpires got on to his balk motion, as the 
enemy got onto his curves, and, ruling against him, they 
closed the gates of paradise to Bobby. 

The other teams discovered he couldn’t stand a 
roasting, and so they roasted. He had youth, high 
spirits, and abounding good health — but he had nothing 
on the ball. Game after game went into the lost col- 
umn. The prince of darkness, in his whirl from heaven 
to the Plutonian caldron, never hit the greased toboggan 
with a greater rush. 

Bobby suffered more from “Slats” Hendrix and his 
stinging ridicule than from any other individual among 
the common enemy, although they all guyed him unmerci- 
fully. Hendrix loved a fight better than an arctic dog, 
and he pounced upon poor Bob like a hungry hen hawk 
on a green gosling. In the first game he pitched against 
the Puritans, Grant heard himself named a gutter swab, 
with no more backbone than a jellyfish, and consigned un- 
conditionally to the bleakest portions of uninhabited 
planets. . '' 


18 


RING AND DIAMOND 


‘‘Yellow as a kite’s foot!” shrieked Hendrix. “His 
balk was the biggest part of Ms luck, and since they’ve 
taken that from him he’s due for a helluva lacing!” 

A fog of despair settled over Bob Granf before the 
game started. He couldn’t have been cold, with a coat 
sweater buttoned tight under his chin, yet he moved about 
as if with a chill. Up and down, up and down he walked, 
his eyes now cast to the ground, now turned to the 
bleachers where sat the faithful who had watched him 
grow from the rawest recruit into the stanchest of stars. 

Hendrix watched him, uncertain, restless, hastening 
to and fro, and there came to mind the story a newspaper 
man had told him that morning. Grant’s father was a 
butcher in a small town, and, when at home. Bob at- 
tracted the attention of the natives for miles around by 
the method he adopted to gain control of his elusive 
spitter. 

His midwinter training- scheme was pitching in the 
back yard of his father’s butcher shop. There he had in- 
stalled a home plate, on each side of which he had driven 
stakes the height of an average batter. Two strands of 
wire, one placed at a height corresponding with the 
“dumb” batter’s knees, and the other about neck high, 
were stretched from one stake to the other. Between 
these wires a ham dangled, and Grant used the smoked 
me^ as the target by which he sought to gain control, 
hurling baseballs by the hour. 

“Here he is, boys!” Hendrix bawled. “Here’s the 
greatest of all ham pitchers! He uses a ham in practice, 
/thinking he’ll be up against nothing but hams In a real 
game. Hammer the ham! Smoke the ham out of its 
hole! Put this ham back where it belongs — on the pork! 
Atta boy, Dick! Wait him out! There’s no ham there 
now! He can’t get ’em over!” 

Bob moistened his parched lips with a stiff tongue, 
passed the first man up, and persisted in disregarding the 
catcher’s signals. To the vituperative Hendrix, lurching 
about in the coacher’s box; no faculty of prophecy was 


AN AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


19 


necessary to indicate that the battle was going to wind 
up in disaster to the Cubs. 

The Puritans scored two runs in the first inning and 
three in the fifth. Little by little they solved the former 
enigma on the pitching knoll, and swung their bats with 
deadlier aim, slowly, yet relentlessly, tearing wide the 
hole in his armor. 

Grant realized that he was out there with absolutely 
nothing on the ball except the cover; that he was men- 
tally incompetent to withstand the jibes of the coachers. 
The conviction stabbed him that he was, as Hendrix elab- 
orately and lucidly explained, the rankest kind of an acci- 
dent. He was pitching like a machine, and even as one 
under the spell of some inimical magi whose Zoroastrian 
power alone prevented him from hurling the ball at Hen- 
drix’s head instead of at the plate. 

None knew better than he that the score should have 
been larger, and that it would have been but for the won- 
derful fielding of the men behind him — the long arms of " 
the outfielders cutting down hit after hit, the fortunate 
stiffening of the inner works as his breach became wider, 
more gaping, more costly. 

No longer were his curves and his speed winning the 
applause of the fans; there was nothing to approve save 
the brilliant rallying of the men behind him. Time after 
time he held the ball till the umpire warned him of the 
time limit, and at such moments his eyes took on the 
tense vacancy of memory straining against the leash of 
forgetfulness. 

Rex Wiley saw it; everybody saw it; his pitching was 
a solved conundrum, one ball as the other, no deception 
to screen them. Nerve, skill, and confidence gone, 
Grant looked as though he had heard the reverberating^ 
suction of Fortune’s good-by kiss, and so failed utterly. 

One after another the gray Puritans flew at him — 
wolves, narrowing a circle, one after another they faced 
him, sneering, leering, beating him down savagely and re- 
lentlessly; but through it all he felt that this could not 


20 


RING AND DIAMOND 


be were it not for the taunting voice that hurled verbal 
missiles at his shrinking head; with that voice silent, he 
felt he could put his hand on the perverse wheel of for- 
tune and force it into equality. 

After the agony was over, Bob laughed at Hendrix 
with an exaggeration of cheerfulness, though the other’s 
guying had seemed the culmination of fiendish malignity 
and black-hearted knavery. 

Bob had lived twenty-four years, had never been ill 
a day, and never lost a meal, save through inability to 
find something to eat ; but he went to bed a sick man that 
night; and he did not eat a bite until Rex Wiley forcibly 
planted him at table and successfully undertook to stoke 
him. 

“Do you think I’m going to let you run up the white 
flag?” demanded Wiley. “If you go moping around, peo- 
ple will believe that Hendrix was right when he said you 
were saffron. Listen to me, and believe. I am going t'o 
send you right back at the Puritans before they leave 
town. You are good enough to trim them any day in the 
week, and I know it. But you want to turn a deaf ear 
to the chatter of the coachers. They can’t rattle you, if 
you refuse to hear them. You lost to Hendrix, not to 
the Puritans, and you are bound to lose to any lively 
coacher if you don’t keep your mind on the job in hand 
instead of listening to some blatherskite’s monologue de- 
livered from the side lines. I’m looking for you to cop 
a victory. Bob!” _ 

Grant did not feel so much like a pitiful little hole in 
the atmosphere after Wiley had told him all this. The 
manager’s eloquence was sweet to him, transcending the 
loftiest flight's of Shakespeare for sheer brilliancy, for it 
was eloquence and medicine combined — ^the kind of medi- 
cine he needed ; a word of praise, the clasp of a kindly 
hand, and the look that reassures. Still, the news that 
he was to face the Puritans again stirred something in 
him, something that hurt dimly, like an ache in a dream. 
Grateful for his manager’s kindness, for his faith, his 


AN AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


21 


emphatic indorsement, he could not deny a sense of per- 
turbation and relief oddly commingled, and contentment 
would not abide in his heart. 

Wiley’s faith in Bob was ineradicable. He scouted 
the idea that the Puritans had found an Achillean spot in 
Grant’s armor, and after winning two games in succession 
with other pitchers he again sent his falling star to the 
mound. 

Viewed as an occasion for hilarity, Gran’t attempt to 
come back was not much of a success. Hendrix was 
largely and vociferously among those present. He start- 
ed right in to inform^the pu^Dlic of some of the fads and 
foibles of the “great ham controller.” 

“Note the eccentricities of this genius!” Hendrix 
implored the smiling bleachers. “When he gets up in the 
morning he always takes a bath before he puts on his 
clothes, and when he shaves he"' uses a razor and a mirror. 
Before appearing on the street he puts on a pair of socks 
and shoes. When his salary is handed to him, he pockets 
the check instead of handing it back to Mr. Wiley!” 

At the end of the second inning Hendrix was in un- 
disputed possession of Grant’s goat, and the Puritans 
had five runs — seven hits for a total of ten bases. With 
Hendrix reminding him that he was as soft as an octo- 
genarian with au coryphee. Bob slunk to the bench and sat 
huddled in a corner. 

Wiley had a serene temper, a sympathy seemingly 
without limit, and a hope that was infectious. 

“Bob, you’ve got to keep your own goat if you want 
to win,” he told the forlorn twirler. “Stop listening to 
the chatter of the gentlemanly coachers; ignore their ex- 
istence altogether. Get a new delivery, if you can, but 
pay no attention to the coachers, and you’ll come across 
with another string of victories. All you have to do is to 
convince yourself that you are surrounded, soothed, and 
sustained by admiring friends.” 

Mistily aware that something was wrong, and miser- 
ably uncertain as to wliat it was. Grant essayed to pitch 


22 


RING AND DIAMOND 


ano'ther game against the Puritans — the morning game of 
a holiday bill— and blew up with a detonating report the 
moment the opposition opened its verbal batteries upon 
him. It was plain now that anybody with a line of caus- 
tic chatter could rattle him like a pound of dried peas 
in a tin washboiler. 

Lots of persons who never ventured within three fur- 
longs of Cub Park were indignant at the showing Grant 
made. They dubbed him “Rattles,” and the name stuck. 

Wiley, however, had a resilient sort of faith in Bob, 
and refused to release him. Suns blaze into being, and 
are not. Men have their little day, and then the place 
that knew them knows them no more. So with Bob 
Grant. Twice again, owing to Wiley’s limitless faith, he 
scaled the pitcher’s peak for the Cubs, only t'o meet dual 
disaster and acquire a fresh and incontrovertible claim 
to the sobriquet of Rattles. 

Wiley himself did not escape censure for his per- 
sistent use of the exploded phenom, and his mildest critics 
insinuated that he lacked sufficient brains to get a head- 
ache. He meant well, they conceded, but wasn’t doing 
well, and if he used Rattles Grant again they hoped such 
imbecility would prove fatal. 

It puzzled press and ptiblic alike to account for 
Wiley’s failure to send Grant back to the bushes. Truth 
to tell, the Cub leader was on the -verge of doing so when 
Bob asked him for an indefinite suspension without pay. 

“Rex,” said Bob, “I’ve got a good schpme right now, 
but I want to practice a little more on that old ham back 
home. Yes: that story was the real goods, and I’m go- 
ing to say now that a long session with the smoked meat 
won’t hurt me a bit. Getting rattled has spoiled my old 
style, and I’m going to adopt a new system. When I am 
ready to come back to you I’ll write.” 

In adversity, your nearest friend is remote. Even 
the small-town friends of Rattles Grant smiled behind 
their hands when they saw him throwing at the ham in 
father’s back yard. They did not gather to admire his 


AN AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


23 


proficiency, as of yore. The idol that had toted a pal- 
pable wallop had proved inherently asinine, had resolved 
itself info green goods. Bob Grant, the sum total of all 
perfections, was a failure, and stood re^'-^aled to all the 
world as the sort of man who has a vacuum below the 
diaphragm; hence their attitude toward him was cold and 
fretful. 

Grant’s task was inexpressibly dreary, but he fought 
back a recurring desire to chuck it. The days marched 
slowly, and were much alike. Ham after ham was made 
to look like an impressionistic picture of a Swiss cheese. 
This should have made Bob’s father wrathy, but that esti- 
mable gentleman only smiled and smiled and rubbed his 
hands and continued to make up a thoroughly apprecia- 
tive audience of one. The feats the son performed with 
a baseball^nd the swinging ham kept the father — a 
madly enthusiastic fan, and a keen judge of players — in a 
state of stomachical quivers and palpitation, not to men- 
tion numerous other rowdy physical 'indications of un- 
couth glee. 

One day Rex Wiley received the following letter: 

Dear Rex: I want one more trial. I think I am 
ready for it. I have more stuff than ever, and if those 
mad-dog coachers succeed in rattling me again I give you 
permission to slaughter me in cold blood. 

I have several new wrinkles, a sf'ghtly altered deliv- 
ery, but the same old curve. I have more control than 
ever and a new system. Heretofore I held the idea that 
it was good policy to keep the first two balls away from 
the plate. Herein was my mistake, and it was a great 
one, as I always had myself in the hole instead of the 
batter. My plan now is to get the ball over the plate and 
force the batter to hit or have a strike called on him. I 
have sufficient speed and break to my spitball to prevent 
the batters from switching on me and landing on the first 
ball for a safe hit. 

You made me pitch when I ddn’t want to; now that 
I want to, won’t you give me a chance? I’ve piched a 
few games in this section of the country, and have dis- 
covered that no amount of guying can rattle me. I’m 
there, Rex, or I wouldn’t crawl out of my hole. 

Robert Unrattled Grant. 


24 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Wiley read this letter a second time, took hold of his 
chin, and pulled at it meditatively with finger and thumb, 
mouth hanging meditatively open. 

Grant wasn’t the kind to bluff, of that he was cer- 
tain. He was resigned to the less of his job as manager, 
anyhow, and he could even face a dairy lunch without a 
tremor. Certainly, Grant never lacked physical courage ; 
every petty artery in him was as hardy as the Numidian 
lion’s nerve. Well, old Bob should have his chance — just 
for old sake’s sake. 

When it was anonunced that Rattles Grant, the cele- 
brated aeronaut of the diamond, was to be given another 
trial, critics and fanatics rushed about emitting catastro- 
phical wails. Wiley couldn’t have met with a warmer re- 
ception if he had attended a fire-bugs’ convention in 
Hades. 

He recalled, with mathematical exactness, the first 
few triumphs of this same young pitcher, and the unfor- 
getable days that followed; hence he concluded that' the 
fans were severe beyond necessity, and bitter beyond 
need, toward a man who had once been a very great man 
in their esteem. It was not long since that they had re- 
ceived Bob Grant’s slightest remark with deep veneration, 
and retold his most frivolous words as if they were gems 
of oratory. 

Grant reported to Wiley in fine shape. What he 
would or could do was largely conjectural, but the mana- 
ger decided to give him an early trial. 

“Feel like pitching tomorrow against the Pirates?” 
he asked. 

“The sooner the better,” replied Bob. “Just ask the 
boys, for me, to let me strictly alone during the game. I 
can’t talk and attend strictly to business. I’ve discov- 
ered that much.” 

Thus it transpired that Bob Grant appeared in the 
box for the Cubs on the morrow, to be greeted with 
groans and catcalls; but he strode around the diamond 
silently, shaking his old teammates by the hand with a 


AN AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


25 


smile that wouldn’t come off, and plunged his foot into 
the rubber amid a silence as thick as a London fog, a 
slender, pallid, consummately self-possessed youth. 

The first batter drew a base on balls, and a loud- 
mouthed coacher immediately scampered down to first 
base, loaded to the nozzle with sarcasm and ridicule. 

And the congregation prayed, standing. 

With the floodgates of ridicule and invective opened, 
everybody waited for what they deemed the inevitable 
ascension. 

“Rattles, the aeronaut of the diamond, will now (?ut 
his shoe laces and hit the heavenly blue!” chortled the 
megaphone-voiced coacher. 

And that was just what Bob Grant did — not! His 
worst enemy could not say that he looked even slightly 
worried. Despite jeers and taunts and personal reflec- 
tions, he was as cool as an uncaught trout in summer. 
His head was as clear as a baby’s conscience. He 
sported with the Pirates with a feline playfulness, and so 
calm and tranquil was he that Rex Wiley could do naught 
but gaze on him in rapt and happy stupefaction. 

Bob was unbeatable. The Cubs knew it. The Pi- 
rates knew it." The amazed and incredulous throngs in 
the bleachers and stand knew it. The final score was 
three to nothing, with the Gubs on the long end, and the 
work of Grant, the unrattled, merited the swellest crea- 
tions of the word milliners. 

Two days later Bob followed his first victory with 
another, this time at the expense of the Eagles, league 
leaders, and slashing hitters to the penultimate name on 
the batting order. 

Then along came Hendrix with his Puritans. 

“Here’s where Grant becomes Rattles, the aeronaut 
of the diamond,” whispered thh pessimistic followers of 
the home team. They knew that Hendrix could marshal 
stinging personalities as could no other coach, and that 
while his shafts of humor were often jejune and idiotic, 
they were always as thick as lobsters in the wake of a 
chorus girl. 


26 


RING AND DIAMOND 


But Grant’s reception of the Puritans sallies, and es- 
pecially the unconventional bon mots of the much-feared 
Hendrix, differed quite strikingly from the popular pre- 
conceived opinion ; and his brand of hurling presented to 
his dumbfounded opponents difficulties of staggering di- 
mensions. 

If Bob Grant was a wonder in that opening game’ in 
Quakertown,. he was a positive genius against the Puri- 
tans, whom he held to three hits and no runs. He re- 
duced ten of the opposition on strikes, and in only one 
inning did more than three men face him for their medi- 
cine. 

The vast and absolute tranquility of the aeronaut of 
the diamond so completely stunned Hendrix that he had 
no answer ready when, after the game, Bobby mur- 
mured in his ear: 

“Some of these days. Hen, old top, you’ll run up 
against a team weak on holding the third strike, and then 
you’ll give them an awful trimming!” 

Grant went right ahead winning games, the Cubs 
took a wonderful brace, tore off a dozen straight vic- 
tories, and slipped into first place by the latter part of 
September. 

Hendrix testified that the erstwhile Rattles had a 
fine, quadruple-plated nerve, and Ewing Horan bore wit- 
ness to the same effect, and spoke from experience. 

The Eagles, who had been pacemakers all season, 
cracked, and Horan’s Titans came along with a rush, 
trickled into second position, and ran neck and neck with 
the Cubs in the last few days of the race. 

Ewing Horan knew baseball as Rockefeller l<;nows 
the oil business; and, while he had no one pitcher on his 
staff who had equaled the ^azzling performances of Bob 
Grant, he contrived to bring the Titans to a tie with the 
Cubs at the end of the season, with only one- game to play. 

Quite naturally, Rex Wiley had not anticipated such a 
close finish to the pennant race, brut all his latent opti- 
mism came to the surface with the thought that Bob, re- 


AN AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


27 


freshed from a two days’ rest, was available for the deci- 
sive game. His heart was set on winning the flag, for he 
had waited many a long, slow-footed year for the oppor- 
tunity that was now his. 

Keyed up to the highest possible tension, the Titans 
and the Cubs began their battle for the pennant, in the 
presence of an immense crowd. Kueny, Horan’s veteran 
flinger, and the whilom aeronaut of the diamond were 
pitted against each other, and during the early innings 
both appeared to have everything an expert needs 
in a game with a championship at stake. 

For flve innings both teams went scoreless; then the 
Cubs slipped a run over the plate that looked as big as 
the Woolworth Building. It seemed all-sufficient in 
view of the fact that Grant was pitching magnificent ball. 
Nothing Wiley could think of was tantamount to Bob’s 
immeasurable composure. His delivery seemed to grow 
stronger as the game progressed, and the ninth inning 
arrived with the Cubs still in the lead by that big little 
run. 

The Cubs failed to add to their score in their half 
of the ninth, and took the field supremely confident of 
victory. Bob Grant went coolly and delibertely to 
work. His contorted body unlocked with a snap but 
three times, and the first batter was out on strikes. The 
crowd roared its pleasure, bells jangled, horns tooted, and 
bedlam came out for a holiday as Brady, the Titans’ best 
sticksmith, swung up to the plate, determined to do or 
die, only a moment later to matriculate into the academy 
of baseball immortals. 

Bob rolled the ball in his hands, rubbed it on his 
shirt, drew back his skilled arm, and then, descending in a 
swift arc, thrust it toward to plate. The tumult was 
drowned in the twinkling of an eyelash in a dismal, bot- 
tomless grief of hurt silence. For Brady had lifted the 
ball over the center fielder’s head for three bases! 

Bob sensed the anxiety of the home rooters. It was 
immensely trying to watch and wait. He would give 


28 


RING AND DIAMOND 


them welcome relief as speedily as pcfssible. Cool as 
polar snows, he curved over three strikes on the next man, 
making the unfortunate athlete miss by such wide mar- 
gins that the fans couldn’t resist the conclusion that he 
would have been unable to hit a rainstorm with an um- 
brella. 

Two out, and a man on third! Bob grinned amicably 
at the vociferous Horan in the coacher’s box, and sent up 
a straight fast one to Pell, a pinch hitter. The sphere 
arrived at the plate with such blinding speed that Pell 
half ducked, then swung at it, frantically, unseeingly, 
but none the less luckily. 

The ball shot like a bullet down the first-base foul 
line. It’ was' a terrific grass cutter in failr territory, and 
a hard ball to handle. Grant tore over to cover first base 
as the baseman fielded the ball and made a hurried throw 
to get the flying runner. 

In the meantime, the man on third base was legging 
it for home plat’e, amid a hoarse, jarring, deep-throated 
roar of excited humanity. Bob saw the throw was low 
and wide, and flung himself full sprawl at the sphere, with 
his gloved hand extended backward. The ball popped into 
bis glove, but the sprawlng catch pulled him off the base. 
But no sooner had he clutched the horsehide than he 
whirled his body around and slammed his bare right hand 
down on the bag, touching it only an instant before the 
runner’s gleaming spikes flashed into it, not half an inch 
from his fingers. 

It was a wonderful piece of fielding, and a mighty 
dangerous one, but it won the game and the pennant. 

Abruptly, from all quarters, broke the tumult. The 
bleachers were like a great caldron that was boiling over. 

Rex Wiiley reached the clubhouse about the same in- 
stant Bob Grant ducked in, thousands of joy-made fans 
at his heels. The manager slammed a door in the faces 
of the enthusiasts and dragged his pitcher into his private 
shower. 



'AN AERONAUT OF THE DIAMOND 


29 


“Bob,” he cried, “you’re wonderful! But that was a 
mighty big chance to fake, tagging the bag with your 
naked hand. You might have lost your fingers. Weren’t 
you the least bit nervous in all that noise?” 

“Wait a minute,” grinned Bob, putting his hands to 
his ears. “I can’t hear a word you’re saying.” Re- 
moving his hands, he continued : “Fire away. I’ll yet your 
drift now.” 

“What’s the idea?” demanded Wiley. 

“I got it out of a magaziiine before I went home,” 
unfolded Bob Grant. “ ‘Dont shout!’ says the advertsie- 
ment, and that gave me the idea. If they sold people 
ear plugs to make them hear, why not ear plugs for peo- 
ple that don’t want to hear? And these ear plugs were 
the result. I’m the inventor, Rex, but I’m not going 
them on the market, and if you want me to continue to 
win games for your champions I’d advise you to keep your 
mouth shut. I don’t like coachers any more than I used 
to, but I can’t hear ’em!” 





\ 




I 



i 




4 



$ 












> 


A 





• • 


^ *V' , 




v; 


-*r 

*if 


V, 


f 



% 


i 


.'v.' 







*• • 


Won in a Walk 


The telescopic viision of Scrap McDade kept Aloysius 
Dalton, “bush leaguer," in the game long after the 
sporting wise men of the press and hilarious fans had 
relegated him to the lilmbo of the never-was. 

“The father of a long line of brilliant laughs" is 
how Charles Dickens characterized the first hearty, whole- 
souled, completely contented cachination of Ebenezer 
Scrooge, the morning after his nocturnal conversion. 
The first laugh of the season that echoed through the 
Metropolitan grounds when Dalton made his initial ap- 
pearance at third base seemed honored with as many 
illustrious successors. For Mr. Dalton’s third-basing 
^made the stands rock with merriment and gesticulate in 
speechless mirth. As for the sober, steady-going, aver- 
age-computing students of the game, it made them tired 
and disconsolate and utterly sick at heart. 

Manager Scrap McDade was roasted to a rich seal- 
brown. The oracles of the sporting page accused him of 
trying out a misfit that distinctly belonged to the Plio- 
cene epoch. 

“If," they said, “Aloysius Dalton shows the proper 
amount of industry and enthusiasm, he may some day 
rise to the rank of bat boy." 

They did not directly say he was a bonehead, but 
intimated there was a solidification of the sutures in his 
skull. And then : 

“Manager McDade says Dalton is a ‘sticksmith’ who 
will scintillate before many days. This will be received 
with much interest and credulity in the insane asylums." 


32 


RING AND DIAMOND 


McDade, however, could read Dalton as easily as a 
farmer reads the sky. The “busher” had a fastidious 
temper and was overanxious. Harsh criticism from the 
fans sent him into an agony of nervous terror and made 
him stop grounders with his chest, but at bat he shone 
like an arc light in an acre of tallow dips. 

When he hit it was with his total aviordupois back of 
the swing, and it did not take the oppo-sing pitchers long 
to discover that he was without the legendary weak 
spot hard hitters were supposed to possess. He was a 
born slugger, and McDade found it difficult to resist the 
conviction that he would show class as a fielder when he 
learned to face the spectators with the contemptuous un- 
concern of a veteran. 

In the second game of the season Dalton made a 
triple, three doubles and a single out of five times up, 
and had the fans looking rebukingly at each other. In 
the third game he played in he lost the name of Aloysius 
and acquired the sobriquet of “Ivory.” 

' The Metropolitans were playing the Mutuals, a 
team they had invariably defeated with careless ease. 
Their star slapman, Madison, occupied the mound, and, 
the game was looked upon as already won. But the Mu- 
tuals had improved. They had a team inspired with con- 
fidence, good, young blood, and fertility of resource. It 
was an evenly balanced, hard-working, homogeneous out- 
fit that feared no foe, asked no favors and expected no 
quarter. 

In the last half of the ninth the Mutuals came to 
bat with the score three to two against them. Madison, 
the Invincible, was measurably safe, but he didn’t ease 
up. And he didn’t weaken. There was an epidemic in 
the outfield, but it wasn’t catching. 

When the outfield recovered its equipoise there were 
men on second and third. Madison, cool as a block of 
polar ice, fanned the next batter. McCool, the Mutuals’ 
dependable pinch hitter, took up the willow. Instantly 
the Mtitual's’ coach at third base developed an attack of 


WON IN A WALK 


33 


oratory. To an old campaigner like Madison his talk 
was, as Harley once described a famous speech, “a cir- 
cumgyration of incoherent words,’^ but Dalton was not so 
glacial and started to reply. 

“Shoot one at this boob on third yelled the Mu- 
tuals^ coach. “After we dig it out of his chest we’ll keep 
it for a souvenir. That’s the kiddo ! Make him put ’em 
over !” 

McCool greeted an outshoot with a vicious smack. 
It was a line drive over third base. Dalton, with a des- 
perate intake of breath, leaped high up and plucked the 
ball out of the air with his nude hand. The gleeful 
rooters screamed their approval. Then Dalton raised 
his arm and threw the ball over the grand stand. 

“There goes your souvenir,” he snarled at the Mu- 
tuals’ coach, but that voluble individual went insane. 

“Come in! Come in! he shrieked, beating the air 
with his hands. “All the way round boys! O, you bone- 
head!” 

When the pair of gray-clad Mutuals had crossed the 
plate a deep-throated roar arose from the bleachers, and 
Scrap McDade ran out from the home bench. 

“What’s the matter with you?” he barked. 

“That fresh guy wanted the ball for a souvenir,” 
growled Dalton, “so I threw it away when 1 retired the 
side.” 

“There’s only two out, you mutt,” moaned the man- 
ager, and waxed profane along with the godless and godly 
who had paid good money t'o witness this gorgeous dis- 
play of brainlessness. 

“I’m no knocker,” quoth ‘Kid’ McGeary, the Metro- 
politans’ clever second-sacker, “but . if that boob’s par- 
ents had been clairvoyants they would have christened 
him Ivory instead of Aloysius.” 

And Ivory it was thereafter. 

The following day the fans clamored for the gore of 
Mr. Dalton, who cavorted around third base in practice 


34 


RING AND DIAMOND 


with dismal mien. A hen in a rain-storm would have been 
a bright picture of contentment in comparison and hisses 
were Ivory’s portion. 

When the game started McDade sent him to third, 
for he could not figure how he could profitably dispense 
with this fence-breaking bone-head who won more 
games with his stick work than he lost by his lack of 
baseball brains. — 

Ivory, as usual, played an awkward, but fairly en- 
durable, game in the field. At the bat he did yeoman 
service, getting two doubles and a triple out of four trips 
to the plate. The Mutuals played an uncomfortably 
brilliant game and would have emerged victorious but for 
another exhibition of intellectual barrenness by Ivory. 

The score was three and three in the beginning of 
the tenth, and “Slats” McSorley, the Mutuals’ pitcher, 
whose anatomical proportions resembled Cleopatra’s 
Needle, suddenly aeroplaned. With two out he passed 
three men in succession and found himself facing the re- 
doubtable Ivory. 

“Now, old boy,” said McDade, encouragingly, “you 
see how wild he is. Use your head.” 

Just to show the skeptical that he could understand 
and obey orders. Ivory with a foolish disregard for conse- 
quences, stuck his head into a fast inshoot, took the full 
count resting on all fours, then rose and staggered down 
t'o first base, forcing in what proved to be the winning 
run. 

While this extraordinary droll feat won a game, it 
made more patent the discouraging truth that Ivory’s 
baseball intelligence was not growing with anything like 
gratifying rapidity. So McDade worked with him, dur- 
ing the rest of the Metropolitans’ stay at home, to gain 
two results — make him forget the crowd and control his 
temper. Before leaving home Ivory became unmistak- 
ably human and almost normal, but the fans continued 
to be as respectful to him as a Mississippi steamboat cap- 
tain is to a stevedore. 


WON IN A WALK 


35 


It was an uncommonly close race for the pennant 
that year, and the Metropolitans and the Bisons were 
neck and neck. The Metropolitans were in Bisontown on 
their last Western tour when Ivory again stepped into 
the limelight of unenviable notoriety. 

All over the circuit he had been baited and jeered 
by public and players alike, until he was as touchy as an 
hysterical woman. In the last game with the Bisons 
Ivory put his team in the lead by a terrific home run 
drive and thereby incurred the intense displeasure of an 
intoxicated gambler in the grand stand. When he walked 
out to his position the inebriate was swearing in a way 
that would have increased the reputation of any drunken , 
pirate. 

Ivory felt a certain sort of homicidal wrath rising 
within him, but he had almost smothered it when the 
illumined individual in the stand applied an unprintable 
epithet. 

A wine-colored scarlet of anger flushed Ivory’s 
face. He tore off his glove, raced up to the stand, leaped 
the barrier, and before any one seemed to divine his pur- 
pose his abdominous insulter was flat on his back, gazing 
through fast-closing rainbow-hued optics at the tense 
figure of the grim-visaged third baseman. 

Naturally Ivory was suspended. Bisontown base- 
ball scribes called him a rowdy and said he was a dis- 
grace to the game. Even the home papers deplored his 
ill-considered action, although it was admitted on all sides 
that the language of the obese gambler was enough to 
stir the gall of resentment in any man. 

Fate, or perhaps it' is Providence, has an equitable 
little way of balancing things, stroking your right cheek 
so gently, and, while the responsive smiles are shining 
merrily, landing a smarting blow on the left cheek to the 
end that brimming eyes may realize the intricacies of the 
game of life. So it seemed to Manager McDade, to 
whom Ivory’s suspension came like a bolt of lightning 
out of a smiling sky. 


36 


RING AND DIAMOND 


By sheer dint of superior ball-playing the Metropoli- 
tans had been leading the league all season, but with 
Ivory, their acknowledged clean-up hitter, out of the 
line-up, they took what the sporting writers, t’o save their 
own faces, were pleased to call “an unaccountable 
slump.” The Bisons, playing like fiends, crowded the 
Mutual'S out of second place, and on their home grounds 
thrice defeated the demoralized Metropolitans, which 
tied them for first place, with only one game to play — 
and that to decide the championship ! 

It was pathetically funny t'o note the pleasure and 
satisfaction with which the Metropolitan press hailed 
Ivory Dalton’s return to the diamond. His suspension 
expired in time to enable him to play in the last and 
most important game of the season. 

The fans were 'sustained and cheered by an unfalter- 
ing trust in the bone-head they had always disregarded 
as quite out of the sphere of rational consideration. 
They saw him in the light that the wily McDade had al- 
ways seen him, and it was as if somebody had opened a 
door in their brains and let the daylight into all the dark* 
corners at once. 

On the afternoon of the great game the Metropoli- 
tans’ vast grounds could not accommodate all who de- 
sired admi'ssion. Legions of faithful fans filed through 
the turnstiles into their allotted places of homage to the 
semi-deities of that world where all other forms of geo- 
metrical definition give way to one standard of measure- 
ment and form — the diamond. Riot was rampant, rea- 
son had taken wing, and when the Metropolitans and the 
Bisons came running across the field from the club- 
house bedlam broke loose. ^ 

Ivory Dalton, the recipient of more ovations than 
a political reporter ever dreamed of, fluttered among his 
fellow players, plaintively apologetic. He looked as 
fresh as a dew-drenched rose, and the vociferous applause 
of the fans thrilled him to the innermost depths of his 
being. 


WON IN A WALK 


37 


Madison, th^ Invincible, had been groomed for the 
fray, and he found a worthy opponent in “Wizard” 
Duffy, the Bison’s cleverest artisan of the mound. The 
Bisons had a large delegation of rooters on hand, and it 
was plain as a pikestaff they looked for the half-tamed 
Metropolitans to hang up the fiddle. Their private 
opinion, publicly expressed, and backed by the root of all 
evil, was that the Metropolitans were not “the. entire 
Neufchatel.” 

In the right-field grand stand, at the head of a co- 
terie of cheaply pyrotechnic Bisontown gamblers, and 
trying to look bored to extinction, was the corpulent har- 
pooner for whom Ivory had suffered a fine and sus- 
pension. His rococo raiment revealed him to McDade, 
who immediately told Ivory. 

“I left my goat at home today,” said “Ivory.” “He 
can’t rattle me.” > 

The game, splen^dly fought, resolved itself into an 
incubator that hatched nothing but goose eggs until the 
ninth inning. Madison held the Bisons hitless, while 
McGeary and Ivory were the only Metropolitans who 
had solved the delivery of Wizard Duffy. 

The Bisons had gone out in one^ two, three order iri 
their half of the ninth, and when the Wizard fanned 
two of the Metropolitans it seemed a certainty that the 
game would go into extra innings. 

Ivory walked quickly to the plate, took one pre- 
liminary swing with his bat, arid smashed the first ball 
' pitched. When the sphere was returned from the out- 
field Ivory was on third base, smiling expansively at the 
delirious rooters. 

From the portly gambler who sat facing third base in 
the stand, there issued a flow of language that was dis- 
tressingly unparliamentary. 

McGeary, the next batter, swung at two deceptive 
drop balls, and the “Wizard” suddenly threw to third in 
an abortive attempt t'o catch “Ivory” napping. 


38 


RING AND DIAMOND 


‘‘Don’t bother with that bum on third!” boomed the 
deep voice of the gambler. “Strike this fellow out!” 

“‘Hit it, Mac!” pleaded the fans, as McGeary 
crouched over the plate, gently waving his bat and lick- 
ing his lips. 

Ivory ran off third and shot back again. Wiz- 
ard threw to catch him, and when the ball was re- 
turned be became more deliberate in his movements. He 
stepped into his box, his arms hanging loosely at his sides, 
looking alternately at the batter and base-runner. 

The tense, Sabbatic silence that succeeded was brok- 
en by the raucous voice of the gambler: 

“Get the batter! Don’t mind that blankety-blank 
bone-head on third!” 

“I’ll get you!” thundered Ivory, and brandishing 
clenched fists, he walked rapidly down the base line. 

Every rooter for the home team sprang up in a panic 
of sudden fear. Why couldn’t this exasperating bone- 
head do the obviously sensible thing and clo*se his ears to 
the remarks of spectators? They had a chance if he 
stayed on third. Was he going to duplicate the blunder 
that resulted in his suspension? It needed this only to 
completely eliminate hope. “Go back, go back!” entreats 
ed McDade in accents of poignant distress. 

Ivory walked resolutely on, the fans gazing at him 
in astounded horror. The Bisons’ third baseman and 
shortstop tried to restrain him, but he shook them off. 
Then, with incomparable audacity, he trod on the home 
plate, wheeled about, and walked toward the home team’s 
bench under the left-field grand stand. 

Looking over his shoulder he say Wizardo Duffy 
standing in the pitcher’s box, ball in hand, eyes staring 
and mouth agape. He had tricked them all into believing 
that he intended to chastise the foul-mouthed gambler 
and won the game and the championship in a walk. 

“It’s our game !” he said to McDade, his eyes twinkl- 
ing. ' Then, taking another look at the motionless Wiz- 


WON IN A WALK 


39 


ard, he dropped on the bench and shook with uncounfined 
hilarity. 

“Well!” said McDade enthusiastically, and the pro- 
nounciation of that Well! meant more than a volume of 
wordy praise. 



. i . 






. i 


.H} '. \> 



.V '* • -^- 


>5 /v n 





f . /'r • ■ 

( . .• 




• 


■ 5 -: -w* i 

. - ^ ' • • 


.■ .^. y - 


-V, ■ * 

•• V. 


^ ' . A- '■i :> V ' 


•> ' 




« ^ 


••-'•■' * t ’ j- • 


r. % f 


1 • 


^ • ; 


V - 


• .K 


5:r''!r^V^ .' . V. ^ . 



' w«Fi?i 

#Mr 5 £J^-V • 


S-V)-r«7j7?l4rJM 


WWym 


' U-* 




.-y-^.h ^.-'V 










The Honorable Out 


Here’s to you, Yamomato! Wherever you are, 
Banzai! You will always have the core of my soul and 
the fealty of my heart. You came, you saw, you con- 
quered, and like a wraith of the night you flitted away. 
•Peace and prosperity be with you. 

I was managing the Tulips, in a Southern six-by- 
eight league, when Yamo, as we got to call him, appeared 
on the horizon with the quick and padded tread of a cat. 
He had played right field for a Japanese team then tour- 
ing the states, and owing t'o the disbandment of the 
nine, was left jobless and friendless. 

Dave Sullivan, my regular right gardener, had quit 
because of a petty matter of back salary, so I had nothing 
to do but sign Yamomato; and nothing to pay him after I 
signed him, mark you. 

He was as hungry as a policeman with a free-lunch 
beat, yet when I told him that fifty cents was all that 
stood between me and financial annihilaton, he took the 
news with a lightness that was the absolute pinnacle 
of bravery. But his face and faith haunted me, and I 
slipped him a quarter, and an introduction to the Tulips, 
whose hearts were won by his blushing humility and 
quaint, youthful ways and questions. *' 

They knew him for one to whose soul brutality and 
unkindness was the touch of death, treating him accord- 
ingly, and in return he served and worshipped them as be- 
ings of holy scent and luster. 

When our diminutive-league disintegrated Yamo had 
won his spurs on the ball-field, and the unwavering friend- 
ships of his team mates. Seeing this, I waxed content at 


42 


RING AND DIAMOND 


heart, and went scouring the land for a baseball team that 
would furnish a fair guarantee. 

Fortune came forward with an extended, but not 
over-eager hand — fortune in this instance traveling in the 
guise of the Bradford baseball nine. We played them 
three games, won all of them, and 'astonished the natives 
quite as much as ourselves. The sun of success was 
shining on our pathway. After an aching sense of un- 
certainty, we attained to the eminence of good food and 
lodgings, and a surplus of several hundred dollars. 

Pete Hannigan, our only pitcher, abandoned his care- 
fully laid plans to desert us. He was filled with ecstacy 
at the glimpse of real money, and his heart knew an un- 
wonted brightness. 

“Say, Bob,” he said to me, “let’s play the Bradford 
team another game for all the cash we have, and then 
move on to Gordonia. We can beat anything in this 
neck of'the woods. I’m certain. Come on — be a sport!” 

After administering a well-deserved rebuke for re- 
ferring to me as a sport in the future tense, I consulted 
the rest of the Tulips. To my surprise there was only 
one objection, and that came from Yamomato. 

“I individual cannot to Gordonia go,” he protested. 
“Playing there with Japanese baseballers a mobs gathered 
in a great collection and from the play-field were we 
driven with insult, and stone, and vegetable. Peoples 
there the men of my race despise with much hatred.” 

We all looked in Yamo’s direction, speechless for the 
moment, but his eyes were fathomless. It was utterly 
impossible to know what he might be thinking, or if he 
were thinking at all. 

As we awoke from our trance Pete Hannigan pushed 
forward, a virulent crimson in his face and neck. 

“What’ in the hotel has your race got to do with it?” 
he roared. “You go with us, old scout, and if they mob 
you they will have to mob us. You’ve got to go, Yamo; 
there’s no way we can do without you. It was your field- 
ing that saved two of my games in this very town.” 


THE HONORABLE OUT 


43 


“Speaking for myself/' put in “Deacon" Parrel, the 
big first baseman, “I have a very strong notion that we 
must take Mr. Yamomato with us, not as an act of 
friendship or charity, but from motives of self-interest. 
He’s a better player than Sullivan ever was, and we 
would be lost without him." 

The Deacon’s tone was meditative and judicial, and 
the Tulips all flung him little nods of approval ^hen he 
finished speaking. “If Yamo wants to go — he goes!" I 
chipped in. “We all know that much of our recent suc- 
cess has been due to him, and a more honest man never 
played the game. He’s ^mple proof for me that all the 
good don’t have their demise in early youth." 

“I want to go very greatly, honorable," breathed the 
little Jap, his eyes shining with delight. 

That’s how the matter was settled, sealed and sunk 
from mind, for the following afternoon we again clashed 
with the Bradfords, undismayed by the knowledge we 
had beforehand that a crack college twirler had been 
hired to down us. The sanguine spirits of the enemy 
drooped and died ere the game was half over. The Tulips 
went' through their defense like an express going through 
a railroad tunnel, and while our own miscues were thick 
as thistledown in August, we trounced them to the tune 
of 12 to 5. 

There wasn’t enough glory attached to the game 
t'o make a halo for a mosquito, yet Yamo was the bright 
particular star, besides pulling off a play that impressed 
umpires and spectators with his invincible integrity. 

The play was made while Bradford was at the bat 
with one man out. There was a man on second, and the 
batter hit a fopl fly near first base. Parrel lost iWn the 
sun, and Yamo came tearing in from right field. The 
players’ benches were built rather close to the base lines. 
As they were provided with a roof, the umpire was unable 
to see the little Jap when he ran behind the players’ shel- 
ter to get the ball. 


/ 


■V I . 


44 RING AND DIAMOND 

“I have it, -sir!” cried Yamo, and the next moment his 
arm shot into view, the ball clutched in his hand. 

Under the dead pressure of ocular demonstration, 
the umpire waved the batter away from the plate. Then 
Yamo walked sheepishly to his side, and with downcast 
eyes said: 

“You will a pardon' grant me. I drop the ball, quickly 
I pick it up again to show. The batter it' not out until 
' honestly.” 

That umpire, with reliance in man’s honesty totally 
consumed by experience, trembled at his knees, and his 
eyes blazed with amazement. He immediately set' the 
Jap down as one of the enigmatic features of human life, 

“When did he escape?” he gasped. “Does he ever 
get violent?” 

“Bull” Dorgan, our capable giant of a catcher, fer- 
vently hoped that he would never see such a witless thing 
again, and poured a volley of gutteral oaths into the 
pocket of his big mitt. 

When the other Tulips wandered off one after an- 
other as if they were searching for the ruins of Yamo’s 
intellect, I could see the little Jap began to feel uneasy, 
for he knew that in some subtle and inexplicable fashion 
he had frozen their friendly faces. When I found him 
his face was bathed in a flood of tears, gushing warm 
from his sad, almond eyes. 

“Yamo,” I said heartily, “you played like a hero to- 
day. We are lucky to have you, and it was really fine 
and manly for you to admit that you didn’t catch that 
ball. It’s always right' to play the game on the level, 
/The boys know you did right, but they are so used to 
fooling the umpire whenever a chance offers that they 
thought you were currying favor at — at their expense. 
These games mean a whole lot t'o them; they’re a little 
anxious, that’s all. They are your friends, every one of 
them.” 

An expression I could not interpret swept over his 
face, and then he smiled. 


THE HONORABLE OUT 


45 


“Baseball is not a cheat; it is all honorable?” he 
asked. 

“It’s the squarest game on earth!” I declared enthu- 
siastically. “Clean men play the game all over this 
country, but there are tricks that might not pass muster 
with some.” 

“My play is clean?” 

“Clean as a hound’s tooth, and I would not have it 
any other way, Yamo, not even if the boys have to walk 
home.” 

When I rounded up the boys I went at them tooth 
and nail. I explained the situation in a few brief, lumin- 
*ous, and sometimes unparliamentary sentences, and they 
sought out Yamo and tried to convince him that they 
never felt a cold impulse toward him. If he thought so 
he was laboring under a weird hallucination, but if, un- 
wittingly, they had been tangled in any nonsense, it was 
because, his character was too heavenly for their matter- 
of-fact understandings. 

A happy, confident family, we arrived in Gordonia, 
to find its citizens in a ferment' of excitement over the 
game, but talking as if it were hardly worth while engag- 
ing in any extended speculation over the possible out- 
come. It was a fair assumption that they considered my 
Tulips foemen unworthy of their steel. 

The owner of the Gordonia team was a man named 
Plucket. He had characterized Yamomato as a “canary- 
colored wonder with pigeon-toed eyes.” Plucket was a 
short, thick-set, jovial man, a “hail-fellow-well-met” 
with his associate5^, but as destitute of humanity as a rock 
bathed in sunshine. 

When it came to arranging the business details of 
the game, I managed to nail him to an iron-clad contract, 
a feat not easy of achievement, and only rendered pos- 
sible by my pretending that I would be overwhelmingly 
content with the loser’s end. I was really singularly fa- 
vored by chance in catching him in one of his infrequent 
good humors. 


46 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Before I left him he inquired if I would play Yamo- 
mato in right field. When I answered in the affirmative 
he gave a cry of shameless exultation. 

“The fans will give your canary a warm reception/^ 
he chuckled. “These Japs are a lazy, good-for-nothing 
bunch.” 

“If our right fielder it attacked for any reason,” 
said I, “the offenders will be adequately punished, and 
don’t you forget it! Why should the fans object to 
Yamomato. He is a man who seeks and appreciates the 
finer things of life, and in his own country he is some 
pumpkins' socially.” 

The day of the game was ideal for baseball. For 
two hours a steady stream of enthusiasts representing 
every walk of life poured into the Gordonia grounds. 
Scores of automobiles and every description of horse- 
drawn vehicle carried big loads to the scene of the con- 
test, and there was no lack of foot passengers. When 
time for practice began every available foot of space in 
the grand stand and bleachers was packed. 

Of course the newspapers helped. I had cautiously 
let them know that if all the planets were in auspicious 
conjunction with each other, the Tulips hoped to achieve 
victory, but they were not betting the family plate on 
their chances. In the Jap in right field, I insisted, we 
had one of the most wonderful ball-players in captivity. 

The papers printed all sorts of sensational stories 
about Yamo, few of them within heliographing distance 
of the truth. Naturally everybody wanted to see our 
right fielder. My press-agent was anything but artisti- 
cally crude and intellectually stupid, if I do say so my- 
self. 

When the Tulips took the field Yamo was the center 
of attraction. The bleachers jeered and hooted at him, 
and the more polite and reptilian grand stand hissed its 
scorn and contempt. Patrician and proletariat acted as 
if they would enjoy removing his head. 


THE HONORABLE OUT 


47 


“Here am I a^ain!” Yamo called cheerfully to the 
bleachers as he walked into right field for practise, and 
his voice did not hold so much as the suggestion of a 
tremor. - 

Instantly several hundred men and boys leaped to 
their feet. 

“Here we are again!” they chorused, and showered 
the Jap with overripe fruit, stones, and big, hard potatoes. 

When I hurried to the scene with a dozen policemen, 
who promptly quelled the outbreak, Yamo displayed his 
strong white teeth in a laugh that held no mirth, and a 
tear-drop trickled down his brown cheek. 

Although I could see that the respectable majority 
of the fans frowned upon the rowdyism, still a curious 
sensation of ill-defined fear was uncomfortably present, 
and I emphatically refused to send the Tulips on the field 
until a line of cops fronted the right field bleachers. The 
bleacherites then divided their time and sarcasm with 
strict impartiality between Yamouand the cops. 

Our usually steady battery, Hannigan and Dorgan, 
lost their equilibrium in the first two innings of the game, 
and the Tulips came in for a lot of chaffing. I do not 
mean to say that the beginning was either excusable or 
explicable. It reminded me of one of the starts the old 
100 to 1 shots used to make at Gloucester, New Jersey, 
when the surrounding shrubbery sent its citizens to the 
track with bank-rolls earned by plowing. At' any rate, by 
the time the Tulip battery found itself Gordonia had 
gathered four runs. 

The crowd went wild. Plucket rubbed his hands 
with a keen relish as he watched the figure go up on the 
scoreboard. He waved his hand at me and laughed. In 
his eyes was triumph. 

Catherton, Gordonia’s clever pitcher, made Tulip 
bats useless until the fifth inning, when they became in- 
fected with the bacillus of industry. With two men on 
base through clean hitting, Yamo slashed out a triple 
that' scored them and brought “Bull” Dorgan to bat. 


48 


RING AND DIAMOND 


There were two strikes on him when he reached out' for 
a bad one and drove it almost on a line over the left 
field fence. 

The score was tied ! 

A spell as deep and strange as that wrought by some 
wizard’s breath rested on the home rooters. We yelled 
ourselves hoarse. To us Bull’s circuit' smash was the 
sum total of joy — the climax of bliss. I glanced at 
Plucket. He was in a state of apoplectic rage at every- 
thing and everybody, including himself. 

In the seventh inning Gordonia’s hopes revived — but 
only for a moment. Runners were on third and first, 
with nobody out, when a Gordonian cracked a short liner 
over first base. The runners thought that it would fall 
safe, and tore ahead, but they did not calculate on the 
speed of the Jap in right field. 

At the crack of the bat Yamo plunged forward with 
the speed of an antelope, caught the ball ankle high, and 
whipped it to the third baseman, who in turn hurled the 
sphere fast and true to Deacon Farrel, at first, complet- 
ing a triple play. 

At that particular moment I believe I experienced 
the maximum of , felicity. v 

When our half of the ninth inning rolled around with 
the score still 4 to 4, Yamo made them all eye him as a 
jinnee from an Aladdin tale, and brushed past the cold 
psychic shoulder that had been held against him. 

He drew a base on balls, and on Dorgan’s long single 
to left field he flashed around third and slid into the 
plate, apparently beating the outfielder’s perfect throw. 
The umpire signaled that he was safe. 

A thousand voices rose in baffled anger, only to die 
down to a buzzing murmur as the umpire held a mega- 
phone to his lips and implored silence with an eloquent 
arm. 

'T reverse my decision!” he boomed. “The runner 
protests he didn’t touch the plate. He is out!” 


THE HONORABLE OUT 


49 


^ The crowd sat stupefied. “The runner protests!” 
ran in puzzled wonderment from mouth t9 mouth. What 
could that mean? Surely that Jap was not saying he wa« 
out, when the umpire’s decision had let him pull out a 
victory for his own team ! 

But I knew how it was with Yamomato, and some- 
how I felt myself possessed by a thrilling sense of happi- 
ness. Both teams were gathered about the home plate. 
I approached the little man in front of them all. 

“You didn’t touch the plate, Yamo?” I interrogated. 

“No, honorable, I did not so.” 

The words were incisive, calm with the tranquility of 
unwarped truth. I nodded complete understanding, and 
explained matters to the umpire, into whose mind a glim- 
mering of the truth was beginning to enter. Then, 
seizing his megaphone, I swung around to the wondering, 
impatient grand stand. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” I shouted, “the umpire has 
reversed his decision, which was that the run counted, at 
\the request of the runner himself, Yamomato, one of the 
squarest men in baseball. The score remains a tie, and 
the game goes into extra innings. I want to say, as man- 
ager of the Tulips, that Yamomato’s correction of the 
umpire’s mistake is only in keeping with his praise- 
worthy conduct in Bradford, whose newspapers contain a 
record of similar exhibitions of his sterling honesty, which 
some of you must have read. We have in all probability 
lost the game, but that won’t hurt so much if you’ll be 
fair to our little right fielder!” 

This “impromptu” I repeated to both bleachers, and 
they gave me undivided attention. At first the fans 
laughed, but I could see dawning comprehension lighting 
their faces. They derided, wondered, wavered, and 
capitulated. It seemed to come to them as the truth 
came to Saul on the road to Damascus, and when Yamo 
walked out to his position he was given a generous round 
of applause. 


50 


RING AND DIAMOND 


A few moments later, when he made a brilliant 
catch while running with his back to the ball, the fans 
stood up and cheered. 

In the beginning of the twelfth inning the Tulips 
broke the tie, and again it' was a combination of Yamo’s 
speed on the bases, and Bull Dorgan’s penchant for 
trouncing the ball that turned the trick. 

With one run to the good, Pete Hannigan took his 
place in the box, resolved t'o make the result of the 
enemy’s half of the inning resemble the cube-root of a 
vacuum. He considered the lead enough to turn the wa- 
ter of weakness into the wine of power. 

The fading day was rapidly approaching dusk. Pete 
turned on what speed remained to him and fanned the 
first batter. The next man to face him singled, and was 
sacrificed to second. 

Now came Mr. Plucket’s famous pinch Jiitter, Bill 
McGarvey. . He was a natural slugger. The bleacherites 
and grand stand patrons were standing, stamping their 
feet in unison, beseeching the batter t'o “kill it!” / 

McGarvey had an excellent eye, and swung on one 
of Hannigan’s fast straight ones. The bat and ball met 
with a terrific clap. The ball sailed high and was lost to 
sight in the descending twilight. McGarvey flew around 
the bases with the shrieks of delirious thousands in his 
ears. 

Out in right field Yamo sprinted up to the fence, 
backed off, threw up his hands, and whirled around in 
time to see McGarvey turning third base. He ran for- 
ward about ten yards, stopped, and threw. The sphere 
went on a straight line into Dorgan’s welcoming mitt. 
McGarvey could not check himself in time to regain 
third, and Dorgan, grinning broadly, tagged him out. 

I would not have missed the scene that followed for 
all the barbaric pearl and gold of Hindustan. The 
crowd took our little right fielder on its shoulders and 
marched round and round the field. When Yamo 


THK HONORABLE OU’ 


51 


wriggled away from their friendly hands he was sobbing 
like a child. 

Next morning Bull Dorgan brought me a note. It 
was from Yamo, and read: 

Baseball has temptations so many, no longer 
honorable am I. Therefore, I take my quickly 
departure for far away, probability to home. 
Hope boys the same place reach with safeness. 

I’ll admit right now that there was a moisture in my 
eyes as I looked up from Yamomato’s farewell. ' 

“He was integrity itself,” I said, and if my catcher 
had been a man of erudition I would have added that I 
considered the phrase biographical in its apitude and pho- 
tographic in its accuracy. - 

“I thought maybe you’d like t’o keep the ball that 
wound up yesterday’s game,” said Bull, taking a large 
brunette hand from his coat-pocket. “Here she is, just 
as she was when I caught it.” 

And he handed me a big, hard, round potato! 


V ' 


# 









1 


4 


t 




The Last Man Up 


Newton saw an apple fall — -and found the law of 
gravitation. “Papa” Mellinger, manager of the Reds, 
saw the Backwoods Blazers play a five-inning tie — and 
found the king of second basemen. 

Emmanuel Craft was his name, and press and public 
alike considered him the best player of the epoch, a man 
who did so many audaciously clever things in batting, 
base-running, and fielding that he made all other stars of 
the diamond look like Ravenswood at the tomb of his an- 
cestors. 

Papa said that Craft was the greatest player he ever 
saw, and he was not a man to mistake a rushlight' for a 
new planet. 

If Emmanuel T. Craft, was as nearly perfect as is pos- 
sible for mortal man in the mechanical side of the game, 
he loomed just as powerfully in tactics and quick think- 
ing. He had a hair-trigger brain, and was one of the 
few players in the game without a weakness. Tempera- 
mentally, he was tractable and a clean liver, eschewing 
tobacco and strong drink. 

The undisputed monarch of base stealers, he had 
perfected a fall-away slide which opposing basemen mar- 
veled at and cussed in the same breath. His daring on 
the base lines was always stunning the enemy by an un- 
expected coup. Newspaper comment became a chronicle 
of increasing praise, and he was lionized, elevated to the 
pedestal of hero-worship; but all without dispersing his 
modesty or inflating his head. For he was that analogy 
undreamed of in another day and generation — a baseball 
player without conceit. 


54 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Because of his speed, he was dubbed the “Blond 
Bullet.” Above middle height, with fine, expressive 
eyes and a tousled head of yellow hair, he gave one the 
impression of being of a retiring, non-combative disposi- 
tion; but his looks belied his real character. Quiet he 
was, but a more aggressive, alert, and quick-witted player 
never donned the spangles. He worked hard, practised 
integrity as well as baseball, and thought deeply. . 

The Reds, two games behind and with a three-game 
series to play their ancient riv^s, the Browns, who were 
leading the race for the pennant, detrained at Browns- 
ville one fine September day, resolved to snatch the pen- 
nant from under the enemy’s nose. 

Every man on the team wore a look of smiling de- 
termination, f^r their pitchers were working as smoothly 
as short-change artists at a county fair. They were un- 
pleasantly confident, and Papa Mellinger averred that he 
was only waiting for fame to braid the laurel in his 
whiskers. 

“There’s an old Spanish proverb,” said Papa, “that 
‘Luck has a mother’s love -for skill.’ And I don’t know 
that there is anything in particular the matter with that 
proverb.” 

In the initial contest the Reds pounced on the 
pitchers of the Browns like a hungry hen-hawk on a 
green gosling. From the raising of the barrier the 
Browns had no more chance than a fat man in the high 
hurdles. The Reds played such brilliantly irresistible ball 
that the seventh inning saw the bleachers making an al- 
most unanimous exit, emitting a catastrophical wail. 

Not only did Papa’s red-hosed boys fasten them- 
selves to the line drives and smother ground smashes they 
had no license to get, but they simply bewildered their op- 
ponents with their demoniacal base-running. 

Craft, light-winged prince of the paths, contributed 
one run solely through his speed, scoring from second 
base on a fast grounder that was hit to the short-st'op and 


THE LAST MAN UE 


55 


perfectly fielded. His dash Home was so bold that it 
took both players and spectators by utter surprise. 

Again in the sixth, he sped around from first to 
third on an ordinary infield out, flashing along the base 
lines like a wraith. The final score was 14 to 3 in favor 
of the sanguinary Reds, and the day was one of unusual 
sorrow and depression for the citizens of Brownsville. 

Hank Cassidy, catcher and manager of the Browns 
and one of the toughest men in the game, was quoted in 
an interview as saying; “The Reds were the best team on 
the offensive and defensive today. They are more clever 
than any team in the league at getting signals. When 
they get a man on second, he tips off the batter, who 
knows what is coming to him and hits it. This is con- 
sidered fair by the ethics of baseball; but they will get 
no signals tomorrow, and the tide will turn.” 

Cassidy’s baseball intelligence was not dulled by de- 
feat, although his heart was heavy with a haunting dread. 
He had to acknowledge that’ the victory of the Reds was 
a good, big, brag-worthy achievement. In public he 
kept his face split with a cheerful smile; alone he was as 
solemn as a church bell at the deepest hour of .the night. 

Visiting scribes praised to empyrean the incompar- 
able skill and audacity of Emmanuel Craft. They de- 
clared it was now time for every one to speak of him with 
a capital “H” in their voices. Local fans were satisfied 
that his work was ample proof of his unrivaled excellence, 
although they did not attempt to disguise from any one 
that the private understanding was that the Brown’s 
board of strategy had decreed that’ Mr. Emmanuel Craft 
was to be “got.” 

In was only the cognoscenti, however, who had the 
barest inkling of how the speed-marvel was to be “got,” 
and that Mr. Cassidy had nominated himself to do the 
trick if the opportunity presented itself. And it did. 

The second game of the series was about the snap- 
piest which had been seen In Brownsville for many sea- 
sons. It was no one-sided affair, and it was filled with 


56 


RING AND DIAMOND 


thrills by -the bagful. A prettier game on a prettier day 
could not well be imagined, and the wine of the delicious 
air and sunshine was in the veins of both player and 
spectator. 

With a good, hard turf under foot and two nines on 
the job who played like all possessed, making one thrill- 
ing play after another, the game was an exciting see-saw 
from beginning to end. 

McVey, the Browns’ pitcher, suppressed the slug- 
ging spirit of the vivacious Reds. He was not a showy 
twirler, but his think-tank was spacious. He fed the 
heaviest hitters with baffling solicitude, and the oratory of 
the coaches had for him no definite sound or meaning. 
He had the grace of a Roman patrician and his splendid 
work was greeted with universal eulogy. 

The Reds were willing to concede that McVey was a 
tough customer, although indignantly repelling their 
captain’s jocund assertion that he had their “goat.” 

McVey was only human, therefore vulnerable, so 
they kept changing their tactics to penetrate his armor. 
Captain Gardner himself tried a little daring on bases, but 
was caught at the plate by adiairline trying to score on a 
diminutive double to right field. 

When Craft came to bat for the first time he found 
that Catcher Hank Cassidy was not incapable of cause- 
lessly affronting any person he didn’t like. 

“You swell-headed boob!” snarled Cassidy. “This is 
where you get yours!” 

Craft- stepped back and surveyed him with surprise 
and pain. 

“Cas,” he said quietly, “I don’t know why you’re 
sore on me, but you have shown it all this season. If 
you keep up your little game I’m coming back at you 
like an express train. You won’t be my friend; now I’ll 
refuse to be your friend when you ask me. I’ve held 
out the olive branch of peace till my arm ached !” 

Cassidy looked at him * with wrathful, astonished 

eyes. 


TITE l.AST MAN UP 


57 


“Git in yer box!” he growled. 

The first ball McVey pitched, after refusing Cas- 
sidy’s repeated signals for it, was what is technically 
known as a “bean*’ ball. Craft threw away his bat and 
flung himself to the ground to avoid being hit. 

“Don’t crowd the plate,” advised Cassidy, with 
what sounded like a suppressed chuckle. When he had 
spoken he looked at Craft, as a man who has fired a shot 
looks at his bird, to sree the effect. But Craft’s eyes were 
on McVey, who was winding up. 

As the ball left the pitcher’s hand Cassidy suddenly 
straightened and thumped his mitt with clenched fist. A 
handful of dust which had filled the “pocket” of the 
glove spouted into the batter’s eyes. Craft, dropping the 
bat, reeled away, groping blindly. 

“One strike!” called the umpire. 

Cassidy laughted, and his hilarity continued on an 
ascending scale when the umpire, despite vigorous pro- 
tests from the Reds, decided the affair unintentional or 
accidental, because, retreating to the arbitrator’s pro- 
verbial refuge, “he hadn’t seen it.” 

“Strike out, you infant,” hissed Cassidy, as Craft, 
his eyes streaming, took up his bat again. 

At the words a sudden flame glowed in his cheeks 
and lighted the depths of his blue-gray eyes. For the 
moment he could not trust himself to speak. He did not 
mind the legitimate tricks of the game, but dust-throwing 
ran counter to his sense of justice and fair play. 

He struck out, and then, blind as a noon-tide owl, 
was led to the bench for medical treatment while the 
Brownville fans hooted and jeered him and intimated 
profanely that he was not unlike a canine, color yellow. 

But to their infinite astonishment, and Cassidy’s 
complete disgust. Craft was on hand when play was called 
and cavorted around second base with all his customary 
deftness. 

The break, the critical moment, the turning point in 
the game, came in the ninth inning. The score stood 


S8 


RING AND DIAMOND 


2 and 2, and the Reds were last at bat. Two men wera 
out when Craft singled and promptly stole second, beat-* 
ing the irate Cassidy’s good throw. The following mo- 
ments were thickly studded with sensations. 

Captain Gardner, disregarding Cassidy’s wild chat- 
ter, slammed a swift-moving grounder through the first 
baseman’s legs. 

At the crack of the bat Craft was off like an un- 
leashed hound. Not for the space of a heart-beat did 
he pause, but tore around third base and spurted for 
home plate with the speed of a rocket. Yet the right 
fielder was after the ball like a greyhound. Sweeping in 
front of it, he whisked it from the ground and made, a 
lightning throw to the plate. The toss was perfect, and 
Cassidy was not called upon to move. But the instant 
the ball thudded into his glove he darted up the third- 
base line to block the runner, his eyes vivid slits of flame. 

He was going to “get” the speed-marvel at last. 
His face told the condemning truth. • He was going to 
determine if the Gibraltar of baseball was really a Gi- 
braltar or merely a Port Arthur. 

On came the flying Craft, making more evident at 
every stride his right to the sobriquet of the “Blond Bul- 
let.” Stands and bleachers were dancing in frenzied ex- 
pectation, imploring Cassidy to “Put the ball on him!” 

If excitement had run high before, it was bubbling 
into a clear, white froth now. One thing was appalling- 
ly evident. A collision between the two players could not 
be avoided, for Cassidy was deliberately “blocking.” 

Craft, rushing along like a runaway locomotive, was 
within five feet of the big catcher, whose attitude was that 
of a pugilist about to repel the assault of an adversary. 
Thinking his attitude had been annihilative of the other’s 
daring, Cassidy came to his full height to brace himself 
for the collision. 

On the instant Craft went -in, feet first, with his fa- 
mous fall-away slide. Cassidy toppled over, the ball fell 


59 


THE LAST MAN UP 

from his hand ; as he rolled aside, groaning, Craft coasted 
over the plate with the run that won the game. 

Cassidy lay motionless, the image of defeat and 
despair, the blood gushing from a deep cut on either leg. 

“Did it apurpose!” he roared, with a t'orrent of blis- 
tering imprecations. 

“That’s not true, Cassidy,” denied Craft, as he 
slapped the dust out of his uniform. His wiry frame was 
tense as a drawn bowstring. “You blocked me and I 
had to slide. You’re the first man I’ve ever spiked in my 
life and — ” 

“This way!” cried the voice of Captain Gardner, and 
he felt himself jostled along in the midst of set-jawed 
members of the Reds, who were plowing resolutely 
through the crowds of hysterical fans boiling out of the 
bleachers. 

The mob thundered forth its anathemas against him, 
and near the left field exit succeeded in breaking through 
the cordon of sturdy Reds who had constituted them- 
selves his body-guard. 

In that moment a sudden tumult seemed to have 
filled the world. Grinding his teeth together, he struck 
out right and left in an effort to return some of the blows 
that were being showered upon him. 

A stout, grizzled man cracked him over the head 
with a cane, and slunk back to, the edge of the crowd with 
a feeling of the utmost gratification. 

A tall man struck him with an empty paper box, light 
as a cork and as harmless, and seeing he had not missed his 
target, laughed and cried: “That’s one for Cassidy!” 

A heavy-set man with an aggressive face, who had 
been slipping in his blows under the arms and over the 
shoulders of the front rank, now claimed his attention. 

Craft, his breath coming in hurried gusts, his face 
covered with blood, saw his team-mates armed with base- 
ball bats, making their way to his side. 


60 


RING AND DIAMOND 


‘‘Give me a chance to fight this big fellow alone, 
men!’’ he pleaded. “I’ll fight you one at a time — give me 
a chance!” 

He had a very distinct idea of seeing Captain Gard- 
ner close at hand with the rescuing Reds at his back 
when something hard crashed against the back of his 
head. He saw a great yellow ball of fire bearing down 
upon him. The heavens seemed to have fallen. Gard^ 
ner and the Reds vanished amid a field of glowing shoot- 
ing-stars, and he went down — and out. 

When Craft came to his senses in his hotel room he 
said he felt as if he had been spiked by a full team of 
rival players. But he was immovably opposed to the idea 
of remaining out of the last game — the game that would 
decide who would float the pennant. 

While Captain Gardner and a physician fluttered 
about trying to collect his street clothing, he slipped into 
a bathrobe. With a tuft of yellow hair just visible above 
an assortment of bandages that covered his head. Craft 
was a spectacle that defied description. 

“You laugh,” he told Captain Gardner. “I can’t 
do it without hurting my face.” 

Gardner grew suddenly solemn. 

“Craft,” he said, “I firmly believe those cowards 
meant to kill you. They nearly accomplished their ob- 
ject, and Cassidy has gained his main point — to put you 
out of the game'. All the- papers and all the people are 
sore at our second victory. They call you a rowdy and 
everything else that isn’t nice. They think you spiked 
Cassidy intentionally. That rough-neck says he’ll catch 
tomorrow’s game despite his wounds, which is causing 
the entire city to make a hero of him. Get a hot bath 
and go to bed again, old boy. We’re up against a stiif 
proposition, but we’ll try to win without you.” 

“Cap,” said Craft evenly, “I wouldn’t stay out of the 
game tomorrow for a million. If you had anybody that 
would come near playing like I can and will — and that’s 
a whole lot of conceit for me to slap at you — why, I’d get 


THE LAST MAN UP 


61 


out of the fight. But really, I’m not so badly injured 
that I can’t play ball tomorrow. My head is all cut and 
bruised; my body’s some sore yet; but I’ve got my brains 
and my feet. With these I want to help beat them to- 
morrow because — ^well, because I want revenge. Our 
city needs the pennant and the boys can use the money.” 

That was Emmanuel Craft all through. Endowed 
with a royal- instinct for serving others to the utmost of 
his powets, doing this as a simple matter of course, feel- 
ing only that all he could do was much less than what 
was needed, the one ruling idea that governed his whole 
life was to servje his friends. 

Crowds of people thronged the streets of Browns- 
ville -on the day of the last game. Special trains from 
other towns brought great throngs eager to witness the 
game that would decide the championship. There was 
not room or bed to be had for love or money in any of the 
hotels. 

Long before play was called the baseball park was 
the Mecca for citizens and visitors alike. The home 
rooters made it as clear as daylight that no more spiking 
of local players would be permitted. The visitors, how- 
ever, did not hesitate to say that Craft was a& straight as 
a stretched string. Several thousand dyed-in-the-wool 
fans from Redland warmly indorsed this sentiment, add- 
ing that he was to baseball, what the carbureter is to the 
automobile. 

“Casey,” volunteered an inimitably wise and com- 
fortably stewed rooter for the Reds, “wush ash crookit 
ash th’ off hind leg uv a mongred p-p-pup.” 

It was a calm, mild day. The hills were still green. 
Only a few golden siftings on the foliage told that the 
glad heart of summer was throbbing no more, that au- 
tumn’s calmer pulses beat in time to the sigh of the 
breeze. 

Emmanuel Craft’s bandaged head, as he came on the 
field, made him an instantly conspicuous figure. His 
steady eyes swept the crowd with dispassionate scrutiny. 


I 


62 RING AND DIAMOND 

He smiled and nodded to several friends in the stand, 
Hi'S straight mouth-line after this betrayed no expression. 
He came idly, slowly, as if looking for some one. 

When still some distance from where Cassidy stood, 
he halted and their eyes met. Those of the big catcher 
wore a glint of veiled hostility. Those of Craft, not a 
whit more cordial, were blank, except as he stood regard- 
ing the other for a moment, his non-committal pupils 
seemed to bore into the catcher’s face in an insolent in- 
ventory. 

The fans sensed excitement, but Cassidy contented 
himself with looking at Craft’s retreating back in an 
access of hauteur approaching disdain. 

Barnes, pitcher of the Reds, was superb until the 
fourth inning when he yielded four runs. A wild, sense- 
less joy was on the Brownsville rooters. Cassidy bent 
his head, so that the rush of vivid elation that flushed his 
face could not be seen. 

The next inning, however, destroyed his joyous mood 
as cock-crow crumbles dream structures. While the 
Browns’ outfield took a nap, and the infield floundered 
about in a state of mental chaos, the Reds had the turpi- 
tude to tie the score. Then both pitchers tightened up 
and became as easy to solve as Caldean cryptograms. 

In their half of the ninth the Browns succumbed to 
the wonderfully quelling skill of Mr. Frank Barnes, going 
out in one, two, three order.* 

The Reds took their turn with ^he willow. Two 
men were retired in quick succession, and then Craft 
came up with his wagon tongue. 

One strike was called on him. 

“Don’t mind that, old man!” cried Captain Gardner. ® 
Get on somehow, then they can open the gates and send 
’em homfe.” 

The next pitch cut the heart of the plate. 

“Strike two!” said the umpire. 

Cassidy and the pitcher seemed to have some diffi- 
culty with their signals. At any rate, the next pitch. 


THE LAST MAN UP 


63 


probably meant for a “bean” ball, was too higlTfo reach 
with the aid of a ladder. With a huge grin, Craft swung, 
missed by a foot, and scampered down to first base. 

Exasperated beyond measure, Cassidy savagely flung 
his mask to the ground, and walked leisurely after the 
ball. 

Brownsville rooters, watching the “Blond Bullet” 
with anxious curiosity, let out a frightened yelp. Cas- 
sidy hastily retrieved the ball and wheeled around, a look 
of astounded horror overspreading his features. The 
human f^^ash they called Craft, not hesitating at first, was 
tearing for second as if pursued by death. 

In the face of such audacity a scowl was no weapon, 
and even profanity was powerless. So Cassidy threw the 
ball — ^threw it with all the strength of his mighty arm. 

If that throw had possessed as much accuracy as 
speed, Craft would have pulled up at second base. As it 
was, the ball went into center field and the fleet Mr. 
Craft continued on his journey, while Cassidy hopped 
about and shrieked that his own team-mates were trying 
to make him resemble the truth of the Darwinian theory. 

Then, to Cassidy’s unspeakable delight, the center 
fielder shot the ball to the second baseman, and the lat- 
ter, without a second’s loss of time, turned and swung it 
to home-plate. When Cassidy’s digits closed on the ball. 
Craft was more than half way to his goal and going like 
the wind. It was utterly impossible for him to stop. 

Cassidy deliberately knelt on the base-line, a good^ 
three feet from the home plate. With the ball in a vise- 
like grip, he stolidly awaited the runner. 

A low, onimous growl came from the home rooters. 
Another spiking of their catcher would mean not only' 
the loss of the game, but loss of life. Even the double 
detail of police would be powerless to prevent that. 

Craft’s head was clear as a bell, and he knew as well 
as any one in that vast assemblge that another slide re- 
sulting in an injury to Cassidy would, mean his death, the 




64 


RING AND DIAMOND 


probable butchery of his fellow players, perhaps a 
pitched battle between the local rooters and the men from 
Redland. 

But — could he afford to lose the championship for 
the Reds? It was his cue to act, and he knew it without 
a prompter. 

In moments of this sort a million thoughts seem to 
dart through the human brain in an instant; and now one 
saving idea, as suddenly, as sharply, as a lightning flash, 
leaped into Craft’s mind. 

With all the celerity of an aerial fantom rather than 
a creature of flesh and blood, he sprang into the air, and 
as Cassidy swung low to catch him sliding, he catapulted 
over the kneeling catcher’s head and alighted on home 
plate. 


The Busher Belligerent 


Henry Sparhawk was a mild looking young, man, but 
he hadn’t been with the Scorpions a week before the 
veterans of the team tagged him as the freshest and 
scrappiest busher they had ever glimpsed in process of 
development. An(^they had surveyed some self-admitted 
cracker jacks. 

Henry neither looked nor dressed the part of a 
fighter. Hi-s voice was low-pitched, musical, and he 
looked as the musketeer Aramis might in modem dress. 
His enthusiasm for trouble amounted to a positive mania. 
On the spring training trip our manager, Pete Muldoon,. 
got into an argument with the head waiter at our hotel. 
The waiter had said that he wouldn’t favor ball players 
above the other guests. 

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Muldoon. 

“Yes, what do you mean by that?” echoed Henry, 
who came up at that moment. 

“Say, kid, what’s your trouble with this waiter?” 
asked Muldoon. 

“Same as yours,” declared Henry. 

“Well, what’s mine?” Pete wanted to know. 

“I don’t know,” said Henry, “and I don’t care, but if 
there’s going to be a fight around here, I’m in on it!” 

The next day “Pop” McGuire, our veteran third 
baseman, had a clash with Henry. Pop told him to buy 
a flat bat. 

“You won’t hit your weight without one,” said Pop 
disdainfully. “You’ll meet real pitchers when we get up. 
north.” 


66 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Hope so/’ warbled Henry. “Haven’t seen any real 
ball players down here.” 

“Would you know one?” barked Pop. 

Henry was probably as remote from any emotion 
that even vaguely approximated fear as any man could 
well be, but he jumped at the sound of the big third 
sacker’s bellow and came right back with: 

“Here’s one, old top, and my species don’t grow on 
every bush, or in every league.” 

“Why, you conceited ^guttersnipe !” roared Pop. 
“Who are you? You ain’t got any reputation.” 

“No,” cooed Henry, “but I’m going to get one right 
now by taking you behind the club hou^ and beating your 
fat head oif.” 

And that is precisely what he did. McGuire had 
come into proletarian vogue because he could hit like a 
pile driver with either hand, and there were men in the 
big leagues who would have preferred a bout with a 
buzz saw to a fight with him; but in a miraculously few 
seconds the hilarious Henry had knocked him out with 
a short right hook that seemed to travel little more than 
five inches. More J^han a dozen Scorpions saw the battle 
and there followed such a murmur and buzz of amazed 
and admiring comment as must have* reminded one of the 
upward whirring of wings of a just flushed covey of par- 
tridges. Henry was the picture of indifference. 

“Maybe some of you friends of Mr. McGuire think 
it- was a fluke,” he remarked nonchalantly. “Now is the 
time for all good men to come to the aid of the uncon- 
scious party. Do I hear a voice?” 

He did not. The silence was so profound we could 
hear Pop’s heart ticking as he opened his eyes and stared 
around. He scrambled to his feet and looked at Henry 
before he grabbed and shook his hand with a grave face. 

“I ain’t the biggest boob in the big show, kid,” he 
said gravely, “but there’s few that want to mix it with 
me. If you can play ball anything like you can fight I’ll 
say you make the team.” 


THE BUSHEK BELLIGERENT 


67 


Then Henry said things that had always been re- 
garded as a certain prelude to violent collapse. 

“I’m a better ball player than I am a fighter, you 
bughouse burly,” he announced genially. “I’m not a bit 
proud of handing you, a lacing either, for as a fighter I 
think you are as big a hunk of domestic Swiss as the 
Wisconsin cheese belt. I’ll fight you again any time and 
I’m not getting careless with my unbridled health wh^n 
I tell you you’re an easy mark.” 

Pop McGuire’s rage was ^o deep that it left the sur- 
face of him calm. 

“You’re the boss, kiddo,” he said in a husky voice, 
and without another Word he strode off massaging his 
jaw with his palm. 

"In the first game of the regular season Henry ran 
afoul of Johnny Ford, “the fighting umpire.” He had 
drawn three wide ones and a single strike and was anx- 
ious to walk, that being easier and more certain than 
hitting the ball. The next one was a trifle high and a 
little wide. 

“Strike two !” Ford shouted. • 

Henry glared at him. 

“How can I hit that kind, stupid?” he inquired 
sweetly. 

“Get a longer bat, you little shrimp!” rejoined Ford 
with crackling emphasis. 

His next words were uttered when he recovered 
consciousness, and they were: “Was anybody killed when 
the grandstand fell?” Experience is a good teacher, but 
Johnny Ford thought the tuition fee excessive. “I didn’t 
mind the clout on the mustache,” he said afterward, “but 
now every busher in the country will be swinging at me. 
Wonder where that kid learned to hit?” 

Henry was not an excruciatingly clever ball player; 
but he had a margin on our old right fielder, and Mul- 
doon used him in the regular line-up whenever he was 
not suffering suspension for his rough work on the !ield. 
With him in the game the Scorpions became the scrappiest 


68 


RING AND DIAMOND 


team on the circuit, for it was next to impossible to play 
with him and not imbibe some of the fighting spirit he 
kept on tap. 

He ran wild on the bases because our opponents 
knew that to block him with any degree of force meant a 
warm session under the grandstand after the game. And 
there was no denying that the umpires gave him all the 
best of it, for there wasn^t one he hadn’t interviewed off 
the diamond; and no one was looking for another inter- 
view. Johnny Ford was the boldest of the lot, but when 
Henry got after him even “the fighting umpire” plainly 
wabbled, lurched, and functioned badly. 

Pop McGuire’s earnest efforts to please and propit- 
iate his conqueror met with disaster. Muldoon persuad- 
ed him to extend the olive branch, for the two men had 
not been on speaking terms since the beginning of the 
season. 

“I’ll even the score one of these fine days,” growled 

Pop. 

“No, no,” said our manager. “Appeal to Henry’s 
better nature. He is crazy about your favorite black 
bat. Give him that, and say you hope he gets as many 
hits with it as you have. Return good for evil. Heap 
coals of fire on his head.” 

None of us expected Pop would do as Muldoon asked 
him, but he crossed us by handing over his famous black 
bat to Henry. The first day the latter used the old war 
club he struck out every time at bat, and that evening 
Pop McGuire sported a black eye. 

“Henry did it,” said Pop stolidly. . “He said I put 
a jinx on the stick and passed it to him for spite.” 

“This is too much,” said Muldoon, “You attend to 
that eye and I’ll attend to Henry.” 

Now Pete Muldoon’s heart was big and red and un- 
afraid, yet when he laid down the law to the meekJook- 
ing Jlenry Sparhawk he had an overpowering realization 
of his own atomity. 


THE BUSHER BELLIGERENT 


69 


“It’s not right, Henry,” he said intrepidly facing his 
right fielder in the presence of his entire team. “Because 
you are a rough-house guy you have no license to cripple 
the team by taking a punch at everybody on it if they 
happen to cross you. Look at McGuire now! He might 
be out of the game for a week, and we need him worse 
than the Allies need wheat.” 

“Say, Muldoon,” -purred Henry, glancing around at 
the Scorpions present, “I want you to remember that no- 
body ever gave you permission to get any gayer with me 
than the rest of these mutton-heads — or even as gay. 
Maybe you think because you boss this 'menagerie you 
can shoot funny talk at little me. Don’t ever believe 
half of it. The next time you undertake to call me down 
in public I’ll forget your age and fix you up for the last 
sad rites. Now scatter! I don’t feel entertaining at this 
juncture!” 

Whatever Muldoon would have liked to have said or 
done he kept exclusively to himself, and the rest of us — 
well, the rest of us scattered . 

McGuire went to see an eye specialist and returned 
with a card which read: “Sub-derman hemorrhage: Edema 
of upper and lower lid, especially marked at inner 
canthus. • Traumatic conjunctivitis.” 

When Muldoon first read this he nearly fainted. “Is 
the eye ruined forever?” he gasped. 

“Not quite,” said McGuire gravely, “not quite. It’s 
only what we used to call a ‘shiner,’ and a piece of raw 
beefsteak will fix it up all right.” 

“You scared me skinny,” murmured Pete. “That’s 
an awful name for a black eye. It sounds like total 
blindness and a few other things.” 

Pete’s eye would not permit him to play third for us 
the next day, and in the dressing room after the game 
Henry came over to me with a worried look. 

“What’s the matter with that big bum’s lamp. 
Bill?” he asked in a hurried whisper. 


RING AND DIAMOND 

“Traumatic conjunctivitis,’’ I answered^ before I 


' thought. \ .VI 

“Lord!’’ he gasped, and stood staring about him like 

a man facing news he could not assimilate. “Will he 

be blind?” 


I said nothing, but my slight head movement was one 
of affirmation; and he rushed off muttering hoarsely to 
himself. I told Pete Muldoon what had happened. 

“Here’s a chance to take the fight out of him,” I said. 
“He is under the impression that Pop McGuire will be 
blind and is naturally filled with remorse. Keep up the 
deception and you can tame this man-killer.” • 

“I don’t know about that,” said the manager dubi- 
ously. “Maybe, and maybe not. He’ll be after your 
scalp when he learns what traumatic conjunctivitis really 


And it was. even as he said. Henry jostled me the 
next morning as I was" entering the club house. He had 
been waiting for me, and his eyes were blazing — blazing 


and venomous. 

“That traumatic stuff for another bum,” he said with 
a disagreeable chuckle, and I was out of the game that 
day with two black eyes. I counted myself fortunate at 
that, for he worked on me with a glacial ferpcity that 
made me fear the worst, and but for the timely and 
valorous intervention of Pete Muldoon I believe I would 
have been slaughtered.” 

“It was fine and dandy of you to make him quit, 
Pete,” I thanked our manager, “but he’s very likely to 
have it in for you now, and you’ll have to keep your eye 
peeled.” 

“Bill,” said Pete in a burst of confidence, “I don’t 
mind him, and I don’t fear him. He is a pretty fresh kid, 
but I know of one who was fresher than he ever was. 
At least they all told me that when I first broke into the 
big show with the Scorpions. I won’t say I was quite as 
scrappy as Henry, but they tell me my "freshness never 
hurt me any. I think Henry will lose ^ome of his 


THE BUSITER BELLIGERENT 


71 


pugnacity after a time, and when he gets docile enough 
to keep in a box score every day he’s going to be a valu- 
able man. Have you noticed the improvement in his 
playing?” 

I had, and I said so, but I couldn’t forbear to add 
that Henry’s status as a ball player was difficult to esti- 
mate fairly because* of the cerulean frequency with which 
he was ordered out of games and off the grounds. 

“A b^ch warmer is no benefit to a team,” I wound 
up , “and Henry draws more suspensions than any man in 
baseball.” 

“Righto, Bill,” said Pete smilingly. “Still we must 
not forget that Henry is one of the fastest birds that ever 
came out of the bushes and a natural slugger. Nobody 
has anything on him in sheer sprinting speed and he has 
the keenest batting eye I’ve seen in some time. If we 
can make him drop the fight stuff — take the cockiness out 
of him and substitute confidence — he’ll be a sensation. 
He has all the . fire and flash and natural physical advan- 
tages of a Cobb.” 

“And a primitive lust for battle that a caveman 
would call cruel,” I supplemented. “How can you kill 
it?” 

“Give it up this session,” laughed Pete, “but it’s got 
to be done.” 

I felt no animosity toward Henry and he seemed to 
cherish no ill feeling for me. I had to play alongside him 
every day he played, and more than once he was magnan- 
imous enough to concede that I was a fair center fielder 
and might one day make a bona fide ball player. Grow- 
ing bold, I told him — ^what was the truth — ^that Pete Mul- 
doon would be willing to pay him a much larger salary 
than he was getting if he curbed his fighting instincts and 
achieved a record for consecutive games played. 

I don’t know how I ever summoned the courage to 
broach the subject and I recall vividly the interval of 
heart-wringing suspense that chMked my face as he re- 
garded me with glassy, fishlike eyes. 


72 


KING AND DIAMOND 


‘‘Where did you get that stuff?’’ he demanded with a 
blood-chilling hitch of his compact shoulders. 

I was glad enough to refer him to Pete Muldoon for 
additional information, and I was pleasantly shpcked 
when he thanked me and walked away. A day or so later 
he asked me what the other Scorpions thought of him. 
In a flutter of extreme gratification I replied that they 
regarded him as a gentleman and an artist while^ deprecat- 
ing his unquenchable tendency to fight; and I added of my 
own accord that I was grieved beyond words that he 
should continue to prostitute his talents to such vicious 
and unnecessary ends. Then I waited for the explosion 
in gasping consternation. And it didn’t come! 

“Bill,” he said softly, “I simply had to fight every- 
body that looked cockeyed at me. For over two years 
I’ve been the sparring partner of our great middleweight 
champion, and he’ll tell you I can make him step some. 
I came to this outfit with the purpose of putting the fear 
of God in the heart of every mortal associated with the 
game of baseball. I’ve beat up newspaper men, umpires, 
players, spectators and 'club owners. I haven’t over- 
looked anybody and I haven’t been licked. I didn’t enjoy 
the job except when I trimmed a real rotter who fur- 
nished just cause; I’m not a brute. But I simply had to 
lick the baseball world. I wanted to .stick in the big 
league and that was the only way!” 

My incredulity must have shown too plainly in my 
face for he proceeded with his astounding explanation ere 
I could frame a word. 

“Of course you can’t believe me now,” he continued, 
“but wait till I tell you the wherefore and the why. I 
have just signed a contract with Pete Muldoon for five 
years at a salary which some stars would consider hand- 
some, and I have promised to cut out the fight stuff. 
Tomorrow my name goes in the box score — my real name. 
Bill, for Henry Sparhawlc is not. My brother was as 
good as I’ll ever be as a ball player, but his name tripped 


THE RUSHEEl BELLIGERENT 


73 


him and chased him out of the big league. You remem- 
ber Percy Deer, Bill?” 

“Well!” said I with truth. “He was ridiculed into 
oblivion.” 

“I'm ready for that same stuff, Bill,” he purred, with 
daggers glinting in his eyes. “They christened me Cecil 
Clarence — Cecil Clarence Deer is my name. Do I hear 
ribald laughter?” 

He did not. And the baseball world exhibited the 
same discretion! 





Wit, Wind and Victory 


When “Windy” Hawser first came to the Monarchs 
we all thought him a genuine valve-in-the-head, shock-^ 
absorbing human dynamo. And he admitted it. He 
was the first fork-handed pitcher without serious mental 
derangement our scouts had speared in a spacious period, 
and we were so grateful we refrained from challenging 
his statement that he was the duly acknowledged inventor 
of pep, punch, and paprika in baseball. 

In the beginning, before we knew how he had earned 
the sobriquet of Windy, he appeared unsurpassed as an 
example of how a man may underestimate his ability by 
an habitual process of self-depreciation. We were eager 
to hear a sane southpaw talk, if only of himself, so 
Windy proceeded without embarrassment to acquit him- 
self of the task imposed. We took it all in and begged 
for more. 

According to the inside information he distributed, 
he was the uncrowned king of pitchers, wore Rippenheim- 
er clothes, smoked sensible cigareties, brushed his teeth 
up and down, obeyed that impulse, had the skin you loved 
to touch, and'always won a ball game whenever he wanted 
to. With a team like the Monarchs, he believed himself 
surrounded by men and conditions exquisitely calculated 
to produce in him the highest degree of efficiency. It was 
uaimaginable that he should not prove the greatest piece 
of pitching machinery ever dislodged from the dim ob- 
scurity of the minor leagues. We thought so, too, till 
after the season started, and then we didn’t know whether 
Windy was a luxury, an affliction, or a joke. 


76 RING AND DIAMOND 

It must not be thought that Windy couldn’t pitch; he 
had speed, curves, change of pace, and a spitter that un- 
hinged the spines of the enemy batters. But he lacked 
control and taciturnity. He gave all his attention to his 
conversation and none to the batter facing him. 

“Mr. Umpire,” he would begin as he started to wind 
up, “I want you to look this one over carefully. Here 
you are, you' boob with the stick, scrape the smoke off 
this one and place your order for another strike ! What’s 
that, Mr. Umpire — a ball? Well, I’m not angry with you, 
sir; I love every blessed bone in your head, but doesn’t it 
annoy you to have the mice nibbling at you all the time?” 
Then, if the umpire permitted him to continue in the 
game, he would follow up with : 

“Watch this fellow’s bat, sir, for he’s apt to let it 
slip through his hands. Got splinters in both mitts, I 
hear, and can’t get a good grip. Must have been 
scratching his head. He likes a high ball, but never puts 
Ws change on the counter, so we won’t pass him one. 
They tell me he couldn’t hit a low ceiling with a handful 
of buckshot, but I don’t believe it. Here’s something he 
ought to like because I’ve named it free lunch. Ah, he 
missed it, Mr. Umpire! I’m a cruel deceiver, but I only 
followed what is known in physics as Bernoulli’s rule. It 
is a modification of this rule that accounts for the 
baseball curving after it leaves my hand. It is merely a 
question of air pressure, but the gentleman at the plate 
doesn’t know that. There! He shut his eyes and hit 
that ball. They are cheering the fielder for catching it, 
are they? Of course I saw him do_it, but I thought that 
was what he was out there for. Here’s a secret, Mr. Um- 
pire; I let that boob hit it because I know he can’t get a 
foot off the bag after he reaches first. That fielder 
butted in and spoiled my joke.” 

That’s the way it went all the time. Windy was a 
cataract of words. He never stopped talking, and his 
work fell fearfully below the gallant standard his own 
advance notices had maintained. The rest of us tried 


WIT, WIND AND VICTORY 


77 


to stem his flow of language, but he was a verbal torrent 
that could be damned, but not dammed. When his chat- 
ter lost us games we rode him hard. He was not a sensi- 
tive soul, but he soon became conscious of an atmos- 
phere of hostility that pained and grieved him. 

“Steele," he said to me one day in the clubhouse, 
“I don’t want you boys to get sore on me. I simply must 
talk when I’m playing ball, ahd I think I say some pretty 
clever things." 

“Windy," I replied, “the whole trouble is you are 
not out there to say clever things. You’re out there to 
pitch ball, and you’ll have to' do it or get the can. You’ve 
got too much mouth !’’ 

Jim Lamb, our manager, told him the same thing, 
only not so gently. 

“Wind never won a pennant, friend stupid," he 
barked, “and I didn’t hire you to pump words through 
that opening in your face. If you’ve got anything as a 
pitcher, you’ve got to play the ferryman and come across. 
Otherwise, I’m shipping you back to the bushes marked 
‘Opened by mistake.’ I’m working you tomorrow, and 
you’ve got to show something. Ease up on the chin 
music and take me by surprise." 

But the language jetted out of Windy in such quan- 
tities during preliminary practice that Lamb changed his 
mind and let Kittson start the game. Kit did very well 
.against the slugging Beavers until the seventh, whfen he 
yielded nine consecutive hits after two men were out. It 
was a remarkable batting rally; but the Beavers had been 
surprising the baseball world by their furious assaults 
the classiest pitchers in the big show. 

Jim Lamb sent Windy in to pitch the eighth inning. 
He pitched the first two balls in utter silence; then the 
floodgates opened: 

“Is this the famous pinch hitter, Danny Flynn ?”- 
gushed Windy, a smile like a sunrise on his face at the 
sound of his own voice. “Look here, Mr. Umpire — here 
is the celebrated pinch hitter batting for — for practice. 


78 


RIN(j AND DIAMOND 


Well, if he didn’t miss one! Seems to me, Mr. Umpire, 
that it handicaps the big-league bakers because they don’t 
know my pitching. I suppose I’ll have to permit this 
Flynn person to hit the ball. I knew him when he slept 
in a peddler’s wagon.” 

While Windy yielded the Beavers three hits, and we 
cut off a score by flashy fielding, he continued to jet con- 
versation marked with those graces of expression which 
were peculiarly his own. At the end of the inning he 
went to the bench stepping high. 

“What have you got your chest out for?” demanded 
Jim Lamb, goggle-eyed. 

“Well, I held them to three hits, didn’t I?” rejoined ^ 
Windy. 

Now Jim Lamb was always doing something un- 
scheduled and foreign to routine, but we all supposed him 
definitely committed to madness when he announced 
that Windy would be used henceforth in the coacher’s 
box, and only at rare and squeamish intervals as a 
pitcher. If I do say it myself, I was the only member of 
the team with nerve enough to ask Jim where he got the 
idea. ^ 

“I’ll tell you, and you can tell the bunch,” said Jim 
in an even, quiet voice. “Stand on a high building at 
noon some day and hear the city’s ten thousand factories 
blow their whistles. It takes about four million pounds 
of steam every day to blow those whistles. It’s one of 
>,|he city statistician’s neat little tricks to tell you what 
^u could do with all that exhausted steam blowing from 
factory whistles four times a day. Now follow me,” he 
went on, with the air of one stating an unanswerable ar- 
*gument. “Harness that energy and you might run the 
ferries, the street-car lines, the taxi cabs, furnish the 
city street lights, and have enough left to heat your 
house next winter. That’s what power there is in the 
daily exhaust, and we’ve been wasting him long enough. 
Hereafter we’ll have him in the coacher’s box.” 


WIT, WIND AND VICTORY 79 

“But you said yourself that pennants were not won 
with wind,” I reminded him. 

“But we’ll have wind and wit, Steele,” he smiled 
good-naturedly. “Wait and see if I’m not right.” 

And he was. 

Windy’s shooting-gallery repartee and foghorn voice 
discouraged opposition and gave us unforseen advantages. 
Not a man among us showed a disposition to minimize the 
importance of his work, and we scooted under the wire a 
winner of the pennant we had hardly dared covet. at the 
start of the season. The stark facts of the case were 
that Windy won us as many games from the side lines as 
our star pitcher, Morton, gathered in with his iron arm. 
Perhaps more. ^ 

We met the Pioneers for the world’s championship, 
and won three straight games. Then we dropped two, 
and Jim Lamb received the surprise of his life. It came 
from Windy Hawser. He wanted to pitch a game against 
the Pioneers. Lamb was afraid to risk it. 

“I can’t afford to take any chances yet. Windy,” Jim 
argued with him. “We are very far from being out of 
the woods, you know. If we dropped this one the 
Pioneers would have the same chance to cop. If they 
pulled up on even terms they would be chock-full of con- 
fidence, and even Dick Morton might not be able to hold 
them.” 

Windy looked at his manager with wistful eyes. 
He hesitated before speaking, as if choosing words that 
were not easy to find. 

“I might never get another chance, Jim,” he stam- 
mered, “and — and I’d give my heart’s blood to pitch a 
world’s series game.” 

“I’m sorry. Windy, but you can see how it is. Got 
to play everything safe and use Morton.” 

“Does he know you’re going to use him?” 

“Well, I haven’t told him, but I guess he expects me 
to call on him.” 


80 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Windy seemed to be turning something over in his 
i.nind. 

‘‘Can I warm up before the game?” he asked sud- 
denly. 

“Certainly; but we’ll need your coaching.” 

“Will you use me for relief if they get to Dick?” 
Despite the dreary smile he summoned to his lips, Windy’s 
eyes were moist. 

“Sure I will!” Jim Lamb cleared his throat. “Don’t 
think I am blind to the part you played in our victory, 
Windy. Coaches like you are few, and you know I’ve 
sent you to the line in the most critical stages of the 
game. I rely as much on your baseball knowledge and 
discernment to win this next game as I do on Dick Mor- 
ton’s arm. Can’t you see that we need you on the coach- 
ing lines — that we must have you there?” 

“Thanks, Jim. Yes, I see that, but I sure would 
like to pitch in a world’s series. Maybe it’s childish of 
me, but I’ve a notion the pitchers will be remembered and 
talked about long after the coachers are forgotten.” 

“Windy,” said Lamb Very solemnly, “I have a hunch 
that Morton will not win his game without you. And 
I’ll promise you this: If two pitchers are used, you will 
be the relief man.” 

The Pioneers were led by Sam Phillips, one of the 
brainiest managers in baseball. Their work was gen- 
erally fast but chojJpy, either brilliart or miserable. 
Give this sort of a team the breaks and it is almost im- 
possible to beat it. Give it a bad start and it will fight 
even harder. Nothing worried the Pioneers, and they 
had a leader who could keep his head under fire. 

This was amply demonstrated in the sixth game of 
the world’s series. With an ordinary manager leading 
them, the Pioneers probably would have been blanked by 
Dick Morton, who never was better than at the start of 
the game. He had blinding speed, a sharp break to his 
curve, and, what was more, wonderful control. The 
Pioneers usually played a waiting game, preferring to 


WIT, WIND AND VICTORY 


81 


make the pitcher work to the limit, and they followed 
out their usual custom until the seventh inning. Then 
Phillips saw it would be impossible to beat Morton by this 
style of play, and changed his tactics. 

In the earlier innings every batter had been taking 
the first two strikes, and Morton, with his wonderful con- 
trol and sharp-breaking curve, had the Pioneers at his 
mercy. Then Phillips instructed them to abandon the 
waiting game and hit at the first ball pitched. They did, 
and Morton's job became the furthest thing imaginable 
from a sinecure. 

If Lamb had been as shrewd as Phillips, or Morton 
had been using his head, or had either listened to Windy 
Hawser’s advice, they would have switched to meet the 
situation by wasting a ball or two on each batter. 
Windy tendered his advice to both Jim and Dick, but they 
merely smiled and nodded. 

“They are taking a cut at the first ball every time, 
Dick,” said Windy. “If you keep on grooving the first 
few, they’ll slaughter you.” 

“He’s got too much stuff on the ball for that,” Lamb 
had remarked. “I guess he’s going too strong for you to 
come in. Windy.” 

We were leading by a score of 5 to 0 in the ninth, 
and the Pioneers were up for their last effort when the 
storm broke. 

We had scored twice in our half of the ninth, and 
took the field with the assurance that the little old ball 
game was already in our won column. But Morton con- 
tinued to groove the first ball, and the Pioneers batted 
him to all parts of the field. Two doubles, a triple, and 
three singles flew from their bats, every man hitting the 
first ball pitched. They chalked up four runs before we 
had two men out, and then Jim Lamb woke up to the fact 
that Dick Morton, angered , by the terrific bombardment, 
was still trying to speed the first ball by the bats of the 
Pioneers. He called him in. 


82 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Dick,” he said, “you’re not using your head. 
There’s a man on third. Ford at bat, and you’re still try- 
ing to put the first bairpast him. I think I’ll let Windy 
relieve you. We might need you tomorrow, you know. 

“You sure will now,” said Dick, who wanted to finish 
the game. “There’s two out, and I want to show Ford I 
can get him. He’ll murder Windy’s slow curve.” 

“Maybe,” said Lamb, “but I’ve got to take that 
chance. You’ve nothing left but your glove and a 
grouch, and I want to win this game if it’s in the wood. 
Get out there. Windy, and show something!” 

Windy came out, smiling, with a word for every man 
on the team. He even bellowed encouragement to the 
outfielders while he was pit<?hing to Ford, who had one 
strike on him and three balls. 

“The wind is blowing, old boy!” shouted the Pioneer 
coachers. “Take a sail!” 

But Ford crossed us very cleverly by choking his bat 
and rolling a perfect bunt down the third-base line. I 
fell trying to come up^on it, but it was a perfect squeeze, 
with no cahnce to throw out the batter, and the run was 
scoring from third when Windy’s wit and wind came to 
our rescue. He ran over, knelt beside the J)all as it was 
slowing to a stop just inside the line — and blew it out- 
side the diamond! 

There was nothing in the rules to punish the trick; 
the hit had to be declared a foul, and Ford went back and 
fanned on the next ball. 

We carried Windy Hawser from the field on our 
shoulders, but that day we lost a splendid coach and 
gained a winning pitcher, for Windy said the incident 
taught him the value of his breath; and he never wasted 
it thereafter. And when he stopped talking he started to 
pitch unbeatable ball. 

“I miss him on the coaching lines,” said Jim Lamb to 
me the other day, “but the heavy hitters miss him worse 
when he’s out there on the slab bending them over for us 
world’s champions.” 


The Quitter 


The Crickets had reached that stage where they 
called two bases on balls a batting rally when Sidney 
Crav.en joined them. He was a wonder with the stick — 
that rara avis of baseball known as a natural hitter. The 
critics proclaimed him a miraculous combination of mind 
and muscle, with intellectual alertness a^ well as physical 
skill that enabled him to work with the deadly precision 
of a machine, yet with the suppleness of finely trained 
intelligence. 

There was only one dissenting voice, and that be- 
longed to Ed Derry, the Crickets' brilliant center fielder. 
When Craven unloomed himself from the background of 
obscurity, Derry opined that as a left fielder the new- 
comer was, if not grossly incompetent, at least a man of 
secondary capacity. He remarked that you cannot make 
silk purse out of the caudal appendage of an animal that 
expresses its joy with a grunt and its grief with a squeal, 
certain sporting writers to the contrary notwithstanding. 
The phrase was more picturesque than accurate, yet the 
name and fame of Ed Derry acquitted him of the charge 
of jealousy. 

Jerry Bomboy, dean of sporting writers and loyal 
friend of the famous Derry, pronounced Craven a gem 
of the purest ray sereiil, and said so on any and all occa- 
sions. 

^‘Craven," wrote Bomboy, “is so far ahead of all 
other star outfielders that comparisons are idle. His 
superiority is more mental than mechanical. He thinks 
faster, and has more daring and nerve than his rivals. 
Only his presence in the Crickets' line-up has pulled them 


84 


RING AND DIAMOND 


out of last place. He is unquestionably the greatest find 
in three decades. I regard his feat of hitting over .400 
since his big-league debut as something marvelous, and 
right now he is at the summit of his intellectual and phy- 
sical energy and ability. 

‘‘The tricks this busher gets away with day after day 
at the expense of really great and experienced players are 
amazing,” Bomboy continued. “His judgment of fiy balls 
is not quite so good as Derry’s but he starts quicker and 
is a dead sure catch. He handles ground balls better 
than Derry and has a better arm — much better. With 
two such stars as Craven and Derry, Manager Ward, of 
the Crickets, ought to climb out of the second division in 
a hurry.” 

Ed Derry did not like this, and he took pains to show 
it. When he had delivered his opinion of Mr. Bomboy to 
that gentleman’s face, he who spoke the English language 
with pride in its variety and elasticity might well felicitat^^ 
himself upon a new discovery of richness undreamed of. 
Old Jerry tried to check the torrent but once; he might 
as well have endeavored to stop a bullet with his hand. 
He contented himself with saying that Ed was too many 
varietiels of a blithering fool to classify at short notice, 
and staged a farewell of Indian dignity , and Spanish 
grandee politeness. 

Derry was sorry for what he had said when he 
cooled off somewhat, but his was not a nature that admit- 
ted mistakes. Fame was the sole god of his idolatry, and 
he was hotly intent on protecting his reputation as the 
unchallenged king of outfiejlders. There was no excuse 
for his bear-pit manners, but it galled him to have his 
rival esteemed above himself; to \)lay second fiddle to a 
young busher who had hardly known what constituted a 
rectangular meal when he had been having a daily diet 
of peacocks’ tongues and nightingale’s hearts. To com- 
pare him with this Craven was too much like likening an 
eagle to a sparrow; he would be a pitiful dunce not to re- 
sent it. 


THE QUITTER 


8S 


It was not a pleasant reflection that playing beside 
him on the same team was a man who was working like a 
Trojan to steal his laurels. He was frightfully human 
and correspondingly weak; and he rejected Craven’s 
friendly overtures and maintained an attitude of uncom- 
promising antagonism. 

One afternoon, in a game with the Bears, the league 
leaders, a skyscraper was hit to left center, and the 
Crickets’ field captain, seeing that Derry was daydream- 
ing, called for Craven to take it. The high wind that 
was blowing at the time carried the ball far into Derry’s 
territory, and when he saw Craven coming for it his anger 
took fire and he charged at his rival like an infuriated 
bull. They were both carried off the field, and the hit 
that should have been a comparatively easy “out” went 
for a home run. 

Craven did not get back into the game for a week. 
On his first appearance on the diamond Derry was un- 
warrantably persuaded that he was the author of several 
gutter-bred epithets that were applied to him by the 
bleachers. 

While they were changing into their street clothes 
in the clubhouse and in hearing of the entire team, Derry 
took occasion to remark: “If Craven is your right moniker 
you were bom in the right family. You are too rotten a 
coward to repeat the insults you get your friends to yell 
at me from the bleachers.” 

‘‘You’re mistaken, Derry,” Craven returned quietly. 
“If I had anything to say to you I’d say it to your face.” 

“Well, go ahead, then, and say it!” 

“I haven’t anything to say, I tell you.” 

“You’re a liar, you cowardly sneak!” 

The silence that followed, even in that bedlam of 
sounds, was so acute you could have heard a pin fall. 

Craven looked at Derry with a peculiar, vacant, 
puzzled gaze, such as sometimes follows a sudden waking 
from sleep. 


86 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Take that back!” he ordered, his eyes snapping; and 
then, as Derry came toward him, he reeled and would 
have fallen had not several of the players caught him 
in time. 

“What's the matter?” they asked, easing him into a 
chair. “Why, you’re as white as a sheet!” 

“The heat, I guess,” muttered Craven, looking 
around with vague compreliension. 

“The heart, you mean, you quitter!” snarled Derry. 

A quick anger swept into Craven’s face and his chin 
went UP aggressively. He started to his feet and flopped 
back again. 

“I’ll see you again, Derry,” he said in thick, uncer- 
tain tones. 

Ed Derry swung under a shower bath, pausing only 
to laugh with contempt, while the rest of the players 
went about the business of dres'sing in perplexed silence. 
They could not judge such a matter with any certainty of 
accuracy, but even to an unprejudiced mind big Ed’s 
charge of cowardice seemed to have a broad foundation 
of sorry fact. 

Next morning Ed Derry shocked Manager Ward into 
a silence which made that of a tomb sound like a can- 
nonade. 

“You’ve got to do without me for at least a week, 
Mike,” announced the big center fielder with finality. 
“I know all about the standing of the team and that sort 
of thing, but that doesn’t count in a case like mine. 
My kid sister; Lily, is a sufferer from anaemia, and we had 
given her up for dead. The doctors decided to try blood 
transfusion, and yesterday Lily received twenty ounces 
of new blood and took on a new lease of life. I’m going 
to give all the rest that’s needed, and you’ll have to get 
along without me for one whole week. Which,” he sup- 
plemented slyly, “ought not to come so hard with this 
great Craven to step into my shoes and a good man like 
Whitney on the bench.” 


THE QUITTER 


87 

Mike Ward continued silent. He was aware that 
his lack of response seamed both sullen and awkward, but 
he was for the moment tongue-tied. After a convulsive 
swallow he ultimately managed to say: ‘‘You may not’ 
know it, Ed, but we are going to make a bid for the pen- 
nant this season, and we have purchased two of the best 
pitchers in the world. While we are adding strength to 
the team, you are going to take it away. Advertise for 
volunteers, Ed. You’ll have to. There’s lots of strong, 
healthy young fellows who will fill all requirements, and 
they can be had without a great deal of expense. I’ll get 
the owners to pay for any volunteers you hire for this 
blood-transfusion business.” 

Derry stared at him a moment, and then laughed 
Jiarshly. “Oh, I guess not!” he jeered. “Wouldn’t I be 
a fine animal to stand back and let some stranger furnish 
the lifeblood for my sister? Say, what do you take me 
for, anyhow? Think I’m another quitter like that boob 
you got playing beside me? Well, guess again!” 

The manager considered the matter for what seemed 
to Derry to be ahother age.* “If the doctors can get you 
separated from a pint of blood and in^playing condition 
within three days,” he said, ‘‘it’ll be all right; otherwise, 
nothing doing!” Ward frowned and looked out of the 
window to signify that the interview was over. 

Outside, on the comer where he was waiting to board 
a car for th© hospital, Derry almost collided with Sidney 
Craven. The latter’s face was chalk white, and his gait 
was something between a halt, a shuffle, and a crawl. He 
looked up -with a pitiable attempt at jauntiness as Derry 
caught him by the arm. 

“I’m leaving the way clear for you, you quitter,” 
grated big Ed, a hard, sinister smile on his face. “Shak- 
ing because I grabbed yau, are you? Well, what do you 
say to that!” and with the words he slapped the other's 
face and flung him prostrate on the sidewalk. 


88 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Without another look at his rival, Derry got in the 
first car that came along, and twenty minutes later was 
talking to Doctor Tully, at the city hospital. 

^‘You will have to remain here for two or three days 
at least/’ said the physician, in answer to his questions. 
“You will feel no ill effects from the ordeal, and whether 
you take an anaesthetic or not, you can rest assured that 
you will not suffer. We have little difficulty, as a rule, 
obtaining volunteers because relatives gladly submit and 
usually one can be found who is fitted for the test. 
There’s no doubt about your fitness.” 

He smiled as he surveyed the big, sinewy, sun-tanned 
baseball idol, and led the way into a private room where 
lay Ed’s sister Lily, h pretty, pallid-faced girl. 

“You’ll be afraid of me, Ed,” she whispered, “when 
I tell you that I’m living on the blood of a famous prize 
fighter. He wouldn’t let his name be known because he 
has retired from the ring.” 

“You are going to have the blood of a baseball player 
and a boxer, sis,” he sai’d tenderly. “I’ve got too much 
blood now, but if I had only one ounce I’d gladly give it 
to you.” 

The girl smiled and squeezed his hand as Doctor 
Tully came in to prepare for the operation. Derry, who 
felt, and v/as pronounced by the examining physicians, 
abundantly equal to the undertaking, was keenly impa- 
tient to have the thing over with. 

The initial steps were taken with everybody as opti- 
mistic as a political campaign manager, and when the 
transfusion had been accomplished, the effect was almost 
instantaneous. A healthy glow came over the girl’s face. 
She breathed deeper and longer breaths, and she smiled 
as if affected by a new wine. It was a feast of felicity 
for big Ed to see her gathering strength from him, for, if 
there were traits in his character that were ignoble, they 
were not unmixed with qualities of mind and heart that 
commanded something of respect and not a little admira- 
tion. 


THE QUITTER 


89 


Ed Derry became as white as a sheet, and great 
beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead. Finally, 
Doctor Tully raised a warning hand, and the attendants 
led him into the next room and put him to bed. 

For several days Ed was as weak as a sick canary, 
and life seemed just one big, meaningless jumble; but, 
when he was told that Lily would recover, his cup of hap- 
piness was filled to the brim. Before the end of the week 
he stood before Mike Ward with a half-timid, half-de- 
fiant smile on his pale face. 

“Ready for work, sir,” he said, grinning, turning 
his hat in his too-white hands. “Hand me what^s coming 
to me and I’ll take it.” 

Manager Ward bestowed a frown of open disfavor 
upon him, and hard lines showed on his grim face. 

“You are suspended for the rest of the season with- 
out pay,” he said solemnly. ““That come from the own- 
ers. If there’s anybody willing to buy you or swap a 
yellow dog for you, you will not be playing with^ the 
Crickets next year. That comes from me !” 

Big Ed started to laugh, but the manager silenced 
him with a gesture. “It’s anything but a joke,” he said, 
“and the sooner you get out of here the better I’ll like it. 
Your room is preferable to your company.” 

“Go to the devil!” snapped Ed, careless of the idle 
forms of diplomacy. “If I’ve got to take such punish- 
ment because I think more of my sister than I do of ” 

“Your sister has nothing to do with it!” 

“Well, then what am I suspended for?” 

“For completely disabling the Crickets at a critical 
juncture. You were hot satisfied yvith staying away 
yourself, so you had to go and break* Craven’s arm !” 

“Why, I only slapped his face and gave him a push !” 
cried the astonished Derry. 

“And he only fell with his arm under him and broke 
it in three places!” mocked Ward. “Whitney and a few 
other members of the team saw it all. They say Craven 
was ill; that he was ill the day you tried to pick a fight 


00 


RING AND DIAMOND 


with him in the clubhouse. You’re a pretty good mem- 
ber to get rid of, I’m thinking. The doctors say that 
Craven’s muscles are^^o seriously affected that he will 
never be able to throw properly with his right arm again. 
That means that his career on the diamond is ended, and 
all on account of your infernal jealousy. I hope you 
feel good ^er the news!” 

Ed Derry felt his skin prickle and his face grow hot. 
“I didn’t mean to hurt him!” he cried. ‘Tt wouldn’t 
have happened anyhow if he hadn’t been such a quitter. 
He was as husky as I am; why didn’t he fight like a man?” 

‘‘Maybe he was — a gentleman. You wouldn’t 
recognize the breed.” 

Thus is came about that the Crickets followed their 
usual custom* and finished in last place. Ed Derry took 
his medicine without a murmur. And Sidney Craven, 
upon his discharge from the hospital, tried his arm, 
thanked his friends for their good wishes, and dis- 
appeared. 

Jerry Bomboy had this to say in speeding the part- 
ing guest: 

“With the passing of Sidney Craven, the big leagues 
have looked their last upon one of the most wonderful 
ball players of all time. Nothing need be said in con- 
demnation of the cause of this brilliant young man’s 
untimely exit from the national pastime; Ed Derry’s 
own conscience will be his worst punishment. There are 
hundreds of ball, players in the game now whose physical 
endowments are as great as were those of the unfortunate 
Craven, yet there is not one' who can perform the prodig- 
ies this youngster performed. 

“The reason is that Craven had mastered his mind as 
well as his body. There are players who could run 
faster; who could ‘throw farther; who could hit the ball 
harder; and who, if given time, could diagnose a play as 
well. But there are not any in the game today who could 
in the fiash of a second calculate to a nicety the ability 
or inability of the other fellow to execute. Craven sur- 


THE QUITTER 


91 


passM the field because he could think faster and more 
accurately. His brainwork in baseball was mastery of 
mind over matter. The results show it.'' 

So Sidney Craven passed away from the large stage 
of baseball and was relegated to the limbo of the has- 
beens. Another minor leaguer did his best to fill his 
shoes, but there was nothing in^Jeft field save an aching 
void. The other busher finished the season out, bearing 
up manfully under the odious comparisons. Like Bret 
Harte’s piano virtuoso in the sagebrush country, he did 
the best he could. 

Another season waxed and waned, with Ed Derry 
still a member of the rejuvenated Crickets, who finished 
in third place. Mike Ward insisted that he should have 
landed the pennant. Jerry Bomboy agreed with him. 

“As a ball team,’^ Jerry informed the public 
through his paper, “the Crickets are just a trifle stronger 
than any team in the league, and have been for two yars. 
It is easily the best batting teapi in the circuit; the field- 
ing, particularly in the infield, is as good as any and bet- 
ter than the average, while it is the best hit-and-run club 
in the league. Tt could be better on the bases, but with 
a good hit-and-run team base-running deficiencies do not 
show up so clearly. 

“The outfield is strong and well balanced. If' might 
be better on the defense, but for all-around efficiency it is 
hard to beat. Derry, as always, is a towew of strength. 
He has not been batting as well as he should, but he is a 
natural hitter who is likely to break up a game at any 
time with a long drive. The Crickets must be reckoned 
as one of the strongest contenders for the pennant next 
year, for they have an edge, and a fairly large one, on 
any other team for all-around efficiency.’^ 

Ed Derry read all this with unconcealed delight. He 
admired and respected Jerry Bombay as a sage of base- 
ball. Slow as was his mind to arrive at a conclusion, he 
now saw with great clarity that Bomboy was a just and 
impartial critic, and he made haste to apologize and re- 


92 


RING AND DIAMOND 


established their former cordial and somewhat intimate re- 
lations. 

“You were hot-headed, that^s all,’* said old Jerry, 
“and I suppose I was not as cool as I might have been. I 
give my honest opinion at all times, but, personally, I 
never liked Craven quite as well as I did you. Have you 
heard the news about him yet?” 

Ed said he had not, but that he heartily wished the 
former left fielder could play his old position beside him. 

‘‘Well, you will get your wish!” cried Bomboy. 
“Craven is coming back to the Crickets next year. Mike 
Ward says he’s as good as ever!” 

“Then that settles the little old race for the rag!” 
shouted Derry with unfeigned delight. “How is his arm? 
It must be all right again.” 

“Mike wouldn't bring him back if it wasn’t,” de- 
cided old Jerry, and then the conversation became desul- 
tory. But big Ed Derry sank to sleep that night filled 
with exaltation at the prospect of the fine times to come. 

Sidney Craven returned to the Crickets the same 
old model of virile manhood and vigorous mentality. He 
was openly and unashamedly welcomed by Ed Derry, who 
used up an entire afternoon and strained his vocabulary 
trying to say that it was nobler to heal wounds than to 
bestow them. Neither man made reference to old sores 
after this. A tacit understanding seemed to exist that 
all such matters lay behind the hills of yesterday. 

Craven did not raise expectatons he was unable to 
fill. Contrary to prevalent belief, he and Derry worked 
together in the field and on the bases very harmoniously, 
very effectively, and at times very hilariously. And all 
things went very well. 

When the race began, the Crickets got away poorly 
owing to poor road work, but just when their chances of 
getting into the running seemed tragically limited, they 
took a brace and went along at a dizzy clip. • The pen- 
dulum had reached its farthest sweep and the return 
sweep had begun. 


THE QUITTER 


93 


As the race continued, the Crickets fairly whirled 
past their rivals, and about the latter part of August they 
bobbed into the lead. The Bisons were the only team 
that gave them any kind of a fight, and the game that put 
them out of the running and assured the Crickets of the 
championship brought about some interesting revelations. 

As an exhibition of the great national game, this en- 
counter produced one of the best played ball games ever 
witnessed on any diamond. It was a stirring and sensa- 
tional engagement in which the fielding casts of both 
teams starred with wonderful plays. Featured by great 
pitching and equally great fielding, it was such a ball 
game as any lover of the national pastime, irrespective of 
his partisan spirit, could enjoy to the full. 

In the eight inning Craven, in making a sensational 
running catch of a long hit, turned a complete somersault 
without dropping the ball, and then, recovering himself, 
made a phenomenal throw to home plate and nipped a ’ 
Bisort trying to score from third. This was the third out 
and killed the Bisons’ chances of victory. 

The Crickets won out in the ninth inning. With 
two men out, Derry trippled. The Bison twirler had a 
streak of wildness and walked the next two. With the 
bases full. Craven walked up to the plate. The first ball 
pitched struck him in the head, and he fell like a pole- 
axed steer. It was ten minutes later before* he was aware 
that he had won the game by forcing home the winning 
run, and he had to be taken to his hotel in a cab. 

Jerry Bomboy was in his, office writing the story of 
the game when he was interrupte(Lby the cyclonic en- 
trance of big Ed Derry. 

“Jerry,” cried the center fielder, “I want to hand 
you something none of the other papers will have. When 
Sid Craven made that great throw of his in the eighth 
inning he sprained his back. I heard him scream as the 
ball left his hand. And do you know what that son of 
a gun did in that ninth inning, Jerry? Why, he walked 
up to the plate, knowing he couldn't take a child’s swing 


94 


RING AND DIAMOND 


at the ball, and deliberately got himself beaned. That's 
what he did,Uerry, and I think you ought to tell the pub- 
lic about it. Wild Jack Farson, of the Bisons, put that 
ball over with all his terrific speed, and Sid grinned and 
stuck his head into it!" 

“That took some pluck!" was old Jerry's admiring 
comment. 

“And that's the chap I called a quitter when he 
wouldn't fight me !" 

Jerry Bomboy pushed his chair a-yt^ay from his desk 
and arose. “Ed," he said solemnly, “I’m going to give 
you news for news. Five years ago ^;he man you know 
as Craven was one of the greatest middleweight boxers 
in the world. He injured a man in a bout so badly that 
he retired from the ring and went back to his first love, 
baseball." 

'“Then Craven is ” 

“Jack Stratton," finished Bomboy. “You remember 
the day you wanted to lick him in the clubhouse? Well, 
he was nqt suffering from the heat. He was ” 

“He pitied me!" broke in Derry. He could have 
killed me in a fair fight, but he made himself (look like 
a quitter instead. Why? What was his reason for sav- 
ing me? He was faking illness, I know.” 

“You are wrong. Stratton’s illness was real enough, 
but he had just returned from the city hospital.” 

Ed Derry suddenly sat down in a blundering, uncer- 
tain way and covered his face with trembling fingers. “I 
get you, Jerry," he said, #choking. “He was the boxer 
that Lily spoke of, and he gave his lifeblood to save her. 
And I wanted to lick him for it! He lost his blood and 
played a game ; I lost mine and went to bed for four days. 
And I wanted to lick a man like that! Oh, Jerry, you 
don't know how this makes me feek I was a big, puling 
cur; I was the quitter. My only consolation is that I 
didn’t cripple him when I broke his arm." 

‘‘Then you have no consolation,” sai^ Jerry, in his 
kindliest tones. “You have been as blind as the rest of 


/ 


THE qUITTER 


95 


them. Jack Stratton suffered an injury that would have 
put most men out of baseball for good, but he was made 
of sterner stuff. He has spent two seasons learning to 
throw with his left arm, and how well he can do so you 
saw today in that fateful eighth inning. Like all the 
rest of them, you forgot that he ever threw with his right 
hand.'» 

Ed Derry shot to his feet, his face afire with admira- 
tion. “I’m proud that I’m his friend today, Jerry!” he 
cried. “Did a man ever have a finer ‘quitter’ for a 
chum?” 

“Nor for a brother-in-law,” returned old Jerry, 
chuckling, fumbliiig with the papers on his desk. “Your 
sister writes me that I can announce that the happy event 
will take place after the holidays!” 


/ 







\ 



A Blond From the Bushes 


Bret Emerson’s fir^ impression of Vester Cliff was 
one of disappointment mingled with disgust. As catcher 
and chief strategist of the Panthers, he had urged upon 
their owner, Colonel Milbert, the imperative need of a 
pitcher who could win fifteen out of twenty-five games. 
And the colonel's response had been a blond-haired, 
foolish-looking juvenile who wore spectacles and an in- 
cipient mustache. 

“If it’s up to Mr. Cliff,” was Bret’s intial judgment, 
“the Panthers won’t gain enough ground to bury a grass- 
hopp*br. God help him if he has nothing but speed !” 

But as it transpired, the amiable Cliff was not in 
need of providential interposition. One morning’s work- 
out with Bret proved to the latter’s entire and astonished 
satisfaction that he was mentally and manually fit to 
serve baseballs to the league’s heaviest hitters. And 
Bret was not slow in giving him his warmest endorsement. 

“You’ve got a dandy in this Cliff,” he assured Colonel 
Milbert. “He isn’t like the average young busher, be- 
cause he hasn’t any great speed;" but he has pretty nearly 
everything else that is to be found in the shop of a first- 
class twirler. Besides, he’s got a slow-ball curve, colonel ! 
Think of that! Many pitchers have slow balls, but they 
don’t curve. His floats up and executes an amazing 
twist as it reaches the plate. Where did you find him?” 

Colonel Milbert smiled at his premier backstop’s en- 
thusiasm. 

“He’s not one of my ^finds,’ ” he rebutted. “In 
fact, I was averse to giving him a trial until he flashed a 
letter from the old veteran, Dick Brewster, who retired 


98 


RING AND DIAMOND 


to go into vaudeville five years ago. That was before 
you broke into the game, Bret, but Dick was a star slab- 
man, and I guess he knows a pitcher when he sees one. 
He used to pitch for the Bisons, but he retired when he 
was still good enough for the big show. Solely on his 
recommendation, I gave Cliff a trial, though, to be per- 
fectly frank, I didn’t think he would amount to a whoop 
in the wilds of Jersey.” 

“If he takes his signs from me,” said Bret matter- 
of-factly, “he will be the brace to the pitching corps we 
have been looking for. He looks droll, but he is anything 
but dull. He shows signs of immediate promise, and is 
the most promising prospect I’ve looked over for many a 
day. If he takes advice, as I think he will, you may 
safely count on him winning at least fifteen games out of 
twenty-five. I never caught a youngster who handled 
himself so much like a veteran.” 

Colonel Milbert was overjoyed to hear this. His 
long, weary struggle for a pennant looked as if it would 
be rewarded at last; it seemed that a championship for the 
Panthers was now within the confines of a happy realiza- 
tion. They had a competent and well-balanced staff of 
pitchers, and Bret Emerson was an expert judge of them, 
and knew conditions. He schooled them. In the words of 
Ira King, captain and first baseman, every Panther pitcher 
was helped to victory through Bret’s brains. 

Vester Cliff was not slow to recognize the value and 
efficiency of his catcher, and he took every opportunity 
to show his gratitude. 

“You know the weaknesses of the batters,” he told 
Bret, when the season opened. “Call for anything except 
blinding speed. I’m under your orders.” 

It was just a week later that Bret called for an in- 
troduction to Marion Nash when he saw her leaning out 
of a private box talking to Vester Cliff. 

“Still under my orders, Vest?” he whispered. “If 
you are,^ and value my friendship, introduce me to the 
goddess in that box.” 


A BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 99 

The goddess was a pretty, dark-eyed girl of eighteen 
with a delicately carved and daintily colored face and 
luxuriant black hair, and she had caught and enchained 
Bret’s fancy by he^grace and graciousness— ^a personal 
charm indefinable and individual as the grace and per- 
fume of the violet. 

Bret Emerson, and not Vester Cliff, stumbled awk- 
wardly through the ceremony of introduction. Bret was 
usually self-contained, but this girl had him panic-strick- 
en. ^ Marion Nash was indeed the very impersonation of 
youth and beauty, but Bret’s pitiable plight made her 
eyes soften to the purple of a pansy’s heart, and her 
mouth was half parted in a smile. 

“I feel that I know Mr. Emerson quite well already,” 
she said, in a voice that made that irrational worthy 
think of the tones of far-off evening bells. “He’s the 
teacher of the pitchers, young and old, and he can tell 
how the hop on the fast one is coming, how the break on 
the hooks are working, whether the moist ball is darting 
as it should, and many other things that the average fan 
knows little about. It is difficult to catch wild slab ar- 
tists, teach them to switch their stuff, and so on, to say 
nothing- of cutting down their motion to prevent base run- 
ners from taking long leads. Oh, I know the game, you 
see, Mr. Emerson!” 

But Bret couldn’t see anything but her sweet self, 
and while it flashed over him that he was expected to say 
something, he could never remember exactly what, if any, 
remark he did make. It was a dream from which he did 
not awaken for several hours; and then he clung to Ves- 
ter’s hand at the hotel steps and implored him to give 
him her address. 

“She boards with the same family I do,” said Cliff, 
with an amused smile. “I don’t think they can take any 
more boarders, for their home is rather small.” 

“She knows the game from soup to nuts!” gasped 


Bret. 


100 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Yes,” said Vester, “and she is one girl in a thousand 
that knows what a catcher means to a pitcher.” 

“Because you told her — boosted me at your own ex- 
pense! Don’t do that, Vest!” 

Nevertheless, Bret was deliriously happy to think 
that Vester Cliff had so spoken — and to the greatest girl 
in the world! He longed^immeasurably for a chance to 
return the compliment, but it seemed an almost hopeless 
undertaking since he never met Marion Nash alone. 

Vester Cliff was always with Miss Nash, and one 
thing was apparent. She liked him, ahd took no pai^js to 
conceal the fact. A score of circumstances emphasized 
her preference, notably her habit of attending the game 
only on the days he was carded to pitch. But Bret Em- 
erson was unruffled, and just as unremitting in his atten- 
tions. There were times, however, when it was not 
altogether difficult to detect in his manner signs of some 
latent sense of injustice. 

Then came the first Western trip for the Panthers, 
and Vester Cliff’s remarkable performance against the 
Bisons. He allowed* the champions of the league but one 
hit, and that of the scratchiest kind imaginable. He 
fanned four men, gave only one base on balls, and did 
not hit a batsman. The Bisons for the most part seemed 
to miscalculate his speed and hit under the ball, thirteen 
putting up flies that the fielders gathered in. 

This achievement called forth a congratulatory tele- 
gram from Marion Nash and this comment from a news- 
paper critic: 

‘‘Vester Cliff, the sensational young And, who is 
keeping the Panthers in the hunt for the bunting, simply 
slow-balled the Bisons into dreamla^nd. He has a style 
somewhat like that of the famous Dick Brewster, but his 
slow-ball curve is just as baffling as Matty’s fade-away, 
Walter Johnson’s bullet ball, or any other famous inven- 
tions of the slab.” 

After the game Bret was gloomy and morose; any 
one would have thought it was he and not Cliff^ho had 


_A BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 


101 


SO narrowly escaped admission into baseball’s academy of 
immortals. 

“It’s a shame, Vest,” he growled. “That hit was the 
poorest apology for the real thing I ever saw.” 

“Better luck next time, Bret!” chirped Cliff. “I’m 
writing to thank Miss Nash for her telegram. Want to 
hear what I’ve got to say about you? Well, you must, 
so just stand still and listen: ‘Old Bret pulled a heady 
play in this game which really made it possible for me 
to approach the no-hit class. With Bums on third and 
Clark on first, Bret was looking for a double steal. He 
signaled to me for two waste pitches, but Clark crossed 
him by not starting for second. Of course I was now in 
a hole, and Clark decided that it was time to go down, 
as it seemed certain that Bret must call for a groove ball. 
But good old Bret crossed him by calling for the third 
waste pitch, and broke up the steal in a clever manner. 
Bums being nailed off third.’ And that’s just the way 
it happened, old fellow, and Marion will appreciate it.” 

Bret was lost in thought for a minute or two. So 
it was Marion now! Things were evidently coming to 
a head. There was a strange, reckless light in the 
handsome young catcher’s eyes when he finally spoke. 

“Say, Vest,” he said, in a queer, jerky voice, “I like 
you, and I’ll always be your friend, but I want you to tell 
me something. Do you love Marion Nash?” 

“I love her,” replied Cliff slowly and distinctly, “as 
I love nothing else on earth. I know why you ask, Bret, 
When the time comes, you will be given your chance with 
Marion, for I know you love her, too.” 

“I’ve got no chance with her,” groaned Bret, “but 
I’m glad to think you have. If I can’t have her, then I’d 
rather see you get her. Vest, than any other white man I 
know.” 

“Thanks, Bret ; but you must not tbink that you have 
lost Marion.” 

“You mean •to say there’s hope for me. Vest?” Bret 
almost shouted the words in glad amazement. 


102 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Certainly there is hope,” was Cliff’s sober response. 
“I can honestly say that Marion thinks well of you.” 

Bret’s face lighted with joyj_and the next instant 
Cliff’s fingers closed .in a firm grip about his outstretched 
palm. 

You’re the noblest fellow I’ve met!” said Bret un- 
steadily. ‘‘When a fellow plays the game as fair as you 

do, why, then ” He spread wide his hands in sheer 

inability to find words that would express his emotions. 

The Panthers returned home in second place, and 
Vester Cliff was credited with turning in the most vic- 
tories. Many fans and all the- critics were rather sur- 
prised at the home team’s early success. Colonel Milbert 
was delighted. 

“I think we will win the pennant, Bret,” he ex- 
claimed enthusiastically,, “but to make assurance doubly 
sure I’ve offered Cliff one thousand dollars for every 
game over twenty he wins for us. As I signed him up for 
two thousand two hundred dollars to a one-year contract, 
I can afford to be generous. As a matter of fact, he 
volunteered to play for any salary at first if I would give 
him a bonus for every game over twenty that he won.” 

“Colonel,” said Bret solemnly, “this blond wonder 
you unearthed is worth a million. He’s not only a won- 
derful player, but he’s a manly, clean-living, noble- 
hearted pal!” 

While Bret Emerson meant every word of his eulogy, 
he could now afford to lavish the fmost extravagant praise 
upon Vester Cliff. He was calling at the uptown board- 
ing house of Marion Nash, and whenever he made his ap- 
pearance the blond pitcher obligingly removed his per- 
sonality from the scene. 

Bret was more than grateful, and he did not take 
advantage of his friend’s princely conduct. To all ap- 
pearances, he found instant favor with Marion, and the 
chief weakness of his position lay in his inability to press 
his own suit at the expense of Cliff’s unselfishness. It 
may well be doubted that he accepted even a third of the 


A BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 


J03 


fair opportunities that were offered to advance his cause. 

Marion herself seemed strictly neutral until one 
evening the subject of Cliff’s bonus money for winning 
games came up in some unaccountable manner. 

“Vester has twenty victories now,” stated Marion, 
“and I hope ho keeps right on. It would be fine for him 
to get about five thousand dollars and a share of the 
world’s series money. Don’t you think the Panthers will 
beat the Bisons out for the pennant, Mr. Emerson?” 

“I really do. Miss Nash,” said Bret earnestly. ‘‘Vest 
is going to pull us through. I figured that we needed a 
pitcher who could win fifteen out of twenty-five games. 
Along comes Vest and takes twenty out of twenty-eight. 
That’s more than I hoped for, and therefore I cannot see 
why we can’t win the pennant.” 

“Tell me, how is Vester standing the strain?” 

Bret laughed. 

“I think you’re like all the rest of the critics,” he 
said. _“You have compared Vest with some other mem- 
ber of the staff who has a world of speed and yet is un- 
able to win. You have seen Vest pitch many a brilliant 
game, and you wonder how he does it. Well, there are 
few pitchers in baseball like Vest. His nerve is unlimited. 
No situation is too tough for him to tackle. He uses his 
head, and consequently is best in the pinches. He always 
takes into consideration the fact that there are eight other 
players in the game besides himself. With no one on the 
bases, he delights in having the other fellows hit the ball, 
provided their efforts don’t go safe. When things are 
breaking easily he takes it easy, but when the pinch 
comes he is always there. In a crisis he can show the bat- 
ters just a little better stuff than he has previously been 
serving them.” 

“But you haven’t answered my question. I asked 
you how Vester was standing the strain?” 

“Pardon me; so you did. Vest doesn’t seem to be 
under any strain. Miss Nash. There are times when he 
doesn’t seem to have his usual stuff, but the next thing I 


104 


RING AND DIAMOND 


know he comes through with one of his best games. The 
only thing I’m afraid of is that sldw-ball curve. It takes 
too much out of him when he uses it all through a game. 

“But you think he will finish the season as well as he 
started, don’c you?” 

The solicitude in her voice and manner jarred on 
Bret’s nerves, but he answered jauntily: “He’s good for 
the world’s series also !” 

The next morning, during practice, Bret twisted his 
ankle and was carried from the field. It was Cliff’s turn 
to pitch that afternoon, and when he learned that Bret 
could not play he went reluctantly to the task. Perhaps 
he had a premonition of what was in store for him. 

It is open to question whether the Panthers were 
ever before so soundly thrashed by a tail-end team. The 
lowly Quakers, who had not tasted victory for weeks, rose 
up and smote the ball to all comers of the field. Vester’s 
delivery yielded thirteen hits for a total of twenty-four 
bases, and long before the sixth inliing, when he wanted 
to depart of his own volition, the fans unanimously 
begged him to retire. For some inscrutable reason, he 
was permitted to finish the game, although it was appar- 
ent that he hadn’t the foggiest idea of deceiving the en- 
emy’s sticksmiths. 

Colonel Milbert took the matter philosophically 
enough. 

“Those things will happen to the best of them,” he 
remarked oracularly. “It wasn’t Cliff’s day to shine or 
polish. If he wasn’t a good pitcher he wouldn’t be made 
to look so bad by one beating. He’ll come back, never 
fear!” 

The newspaper critics disagreed with the Panthers’ 
owner. “Without Bret Emerson,” they chorused, “Cliff’s 
place is on the bench. So much faith have some pitchers 
in certain catchers that they pitch altogether a different 
brand of baseball to other ihen. This is particularly true 
of Cliff. Emerson has made the big blond what he is,' 


A BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 


105 


does all his thinking for him, and without him Cliff’s 
work in the box is purely mechanical.” 

Bret Emerson read such statements with indignation 
he was at no pains to conceal. 

“Don’t let that stuff sink in too deeply, Vest,” he 
cautioned the big pitcher when the latter called on* him 
in his room at the hotel. “The wise men of the ink for- 
get that you pitch with your head and heart, that’s all. 
Try Warner back of the bat if you work again before I’m 
fit.” 

“Thanks, old boy,” said Vester heartily, “but I’m 
more than half inclined to agree with the papers. I 
miss you as a fish must miss the water they drag him 
from. You see, I failed to check off the little weaknesses 
of the batters and relied on you absolutely.” 

“You had no business to do that,” reproved Bret. 
“Never overlook a chance to store information about the 
weak points of the batters. It’s too valuable.” 

“You’re right,” admitted Cliff, “but I didn’t expect 
to last more than one season in the big show. I pinned 
my hopes to the slow curve. I wish you were all right 
again, but if I can’t have you for my next battle I’ll try 
Warner.” 

Things did not go so overwhelmingly in favor of the 
enemy with Warner on the receiving end, but the result of 
the next game he pitched was just the same to Cliff. He 
lost. 

“They didn’t do a great deal with my offerings, 
Bret,” he said afterward. “I certainly used everything 
I l)ad, and Warner was as good as he always is; but I 
simply wasn’t there is the pinches. It begins to look as 
if twenty games was my limit.” 

“Nonsense!” said Bret. “You will get back into 
winning form again with your next try, see if you don’t. 
Take care of yourself. Vest, and make up your mind that 
you can grab a game with a dummy behind the plate.” 

“I know I can’t,” said Cliff moodily. “I’m really 
afraid I’ve lost my goat.” 


106 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Bret looked at him keenly for a space, started to say 
something, and stopped. 

“What is it?” demanded Cliff quickly. “Spit it out, 
Bret.” 

“Why,” stammered Bret, looking at his nails with 
comical intentness, “I was going to ask you if — if any- 
thing happened between — between Marion and you.” 

Cliff laughed heartily. 

“Nothing like it!” he cried. ‘‘If you don’t believe 
it, ask her. She’s coming to see you this evening.” 

It rained that evening torrentially, but not enough to 
keep Marion Nash at home. She burst upon Bret like a 
dew-drenched rose, a slim-hipped, full-breasted, sloe-eyed, 
richly tinted young goddess of girls. It took a tremen- 
dous effort for the enraptured young catcher to keep his 
powerful arms at his sides. 

“Don’t rise, Mr. Emerson!” she cried. “Keep your 
foot on that chair, sir! If you don’t obey me I’ll leave 
immediately.” The threat being effective, she rattled 
ahead: “We need you back in the game. I tolcT Vester 
that he had better not start another game till you could 
catch him. How is the ankle?” 

“Not as bad as it might be,” said Bret, “and just a 
little worse than I’d like it to be. If it rains tomorrow 
they won’t use Vest till Saturday, and by that time I 
think I’ll be ready for work.” 

“But the Bisons are here Thursday and Friday. 
Have you thought what it means if they win on both 
those days?” 

Bret frowned darkly and bit his lip. 

“Gee, how time flies!” he blurted. “Why, these Bi- 
sons are right at our heels now. Two games will tie us 
for first place, won’t it?” 

“Besides depriving Vester of a bonus;” she smiled. 
“If he could only get into that world-series money I know 
he’d be satisfied to quit the ball field for good. I am very 
mercenary, am I not?” 


A BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 


107 


“Vest must be,” he grinned, “if he’s willing to quit 
after one year of the big show. I think I’ll get back 
into the game Saturday.” 

“I’ll kiss you if you do !” 

“My dear Miss Nash !” he cried, blushing furiously. 

“Go on!” she laughed. ‘‘That sounds like the be- 
ginning of a very interesting letter!” 

A queer shiver ran through Bret’s body, but it was 
a palsy of joy, not panic. 

“Marion,” he stammered, “Marion, I’ve got some- 
thing to say to you that — — ” 

“That will keep until the baseball days are over. I’m 
sure.” She rose and walked to the door. “Please be^ 
lieve that I shall esteem it a great kindness,” she said 
softly, “and in the meanwhile, you might continue to call 
me Marion — Bret!” 

She fled at that, and Bret hopped about the room* 
hugging the pillows thatiiad supported his injured foot, 
in sheer ecstacy. 

Saturday came and brought victory — ^victory for the 
Panthers and Vester Cliff. And it brought undiluted 
bliss to Bret Emerson in the touch of a moist, scarlet 
mouth from which he soon expected to hear his fate pro- 
nounced. 

Colonel Milbert shook hands with Bret as one who 
greets a favorite son returned safely from a hazardous 
enterprise. 

“We’ve started again!” he effervesced. “Nothing 
can stop us now!” 

And an excellent prophet the good colonel proved to 
be, for the Panthers kept in the lead for the coveted 
pennant, maintained it to the end, and swept into the 
world’s series with the Metropolitans with a dash and 
spirit that gave them an even break with their formidable 
rivals in the first six games played. 

The deciding game was played on the Panthers^ 
grounds, and of course Vester Cliff was selected to pitch 
the colonel’s pets to victory. He had been uniformly 


108 


RING AND DIAMOND 


successful from the moment Bret Emerson returned to 
duty, and his bonus money alone had amounted to six 

thousand dollars. ^ , * 

Bret Emerson’s thoughts, however, were not of 
money. Not for one fleeting second did he forget the 
girl whose actions had convinced him that his suit was re- 
garded with anything but disfavor, and on the morning 
of the big game he took her for a mo/tor 'ride into the 
country. 

“I thought you would forget poor little me today,” 
she confessed archly. “Vester bid me good-by early this 
morning and said he wouldn’t return till after the game.” 

“That’s when you will see me again,” he warned her. 
“I remember your promise to listen to me when ‘base- 
ball days are over.’ ” 

“What a memory you have !” 

.When they returned from their ride, Bret took 
leave of her on the steps of her4)oarding house. 

“Any message for Vest?” he smiled, feeling that he 
could be just as magnanimous as Cliff had been. 

“Well,” she rejoined musingly, ‘‘you might tell him 
that I put his money in the bank. I forgot to mention it 
this morning.” 

“His money?” questioned Bret. “Are you saving 
his money for him?” 

‘.‘I always have,” came the paralyzing response. 
“We have enough for a home now, and I promised to go 
with him when the season closed. Oh, I forgot!’*’ 

“I think you did,” said Bret, in a hard, savage voice, 
and he leaped down to the sidewalk and strode off. 

Bret Emerson went into the big game with the air 
of one^for whom the world holds naught but grief. He 
greeted Cliff without emotion, and went about the job in 
hand like' an automaton. He was in that state beyond 
excitement, where nothing surprises or shocks or un- 
nerves. The score was 1—0 in favor of the Panthers in 
the seventh inning, when Grimrod, the Metropolitans’ 


Al BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 


109 


star slugger, stole a word with him as the teams changed 
sides. 

“Tip me off right if there’s a chance, Bret,” he 
whispered. “You’ll get twice the regular slice if you do.” 

That, and that only, brought Bret Emerson out of 
his trance. The very notion of placing a stigma on the 
squarest sport in the world was enough to make the 
blood boil in his veins, but the thought of an opponent, 
upon whose honor he would have staked his life, being the 
author of such an infamous^uggestion filled him with 
col^ disdain. 

And there was Vester Cliff to be thought of. What- 
ever he thought of the conduct of Marion Nash, he could 
not pick a flaw in the blond pitcher’s armor of integrity. 
Well, he could play either game — life or baseball — just 
as cleanly! 

Vester Cliff had pitched a careful game; he had met 
every crisis with a heart of oak. His control was almost 
uncanny. He kept the ball just where Bret signed for 
it, which was where the batter didn’t like it, of course. 

Grimrod came up to the plate in the ninth inning 
with the score still 1—0 against them, a man on second, 
and a hit needed to tie the score. He took a strike while 
trying to catch Bret’s eye. It was then the young 
catcher gave him his attention. 

“Two down and look who’s here!” he chattered. 
“The only crook in baseball wants me to tip him off! 
Well, he’s headed for the bushes, and I might as well 
help him out! I’m going to sign for a curve this time, 
old boy, so step into it!” 

And Bret actually gave the curve-ball sign, and 
laughed as Grimrod stood and looked at the ball curve 
over the heart of the plate for the second strike. 

“Well, well, well!” he chortled. “He don’t like 
curves! Let’s have another one, Vester!” 

He signed for another curve, which cut the outside 
corner of the plate while Grimrod looked disdainfully on. 


110 


RING AND DIAMOND 


never thinking Bret would truthfully tip off his signals 
twice in succession. 

^‘Strike three! He's out!” bawled the umpire, and 
before the astonished fans could gasp what had happened, 
Grimrod, with a terrible oath, lashed out at the grinning 
catcher’s head with his bat. There was a nauseating, 
hollow report as the wood found its human target; then 
Bret fell limply forward with outstretched arms. 

Bret slid off a cloud and fell down, down, down, 
clawing frantically at empty darkness until he caught a 
hand — and awoke to find himself in bed, with Marion 
Nash holding his hand, and Colonel Milbert and Vester 
Cliff smiling at him from the foot of the bed. 

He closed his eyes again for a moment; then, rather 
roughly, he sought to release his hand. 

“Won’t you let me hold your hand?” asked the girl 
meltingly. 

“Are you married yet?” he asked, with brutal irrele- 
vance. 

“Please, Bret, please be patient!” she entreated. 

“Emerson,” spoke up Vester Cliff, ‘‘I think, it’s time 
for you to hear the story I have already related to Col- 
onel Milbert. More than five years ago I retired from the 
diamond with a goodly share of this world’s goods, and 
last year, when I lost every cent in a theatrical venture, I 
determined to retrieve my shattered fortunes on the ball 
field. I approached but one big-league magnate — the 
owner of the Bisons, with whom I used to play. He 
laughed at me, and told me there was no room in the big 
show for a gray-haired has-been. I am only thirty-nine 
years of age, but I realized that every other owner and 
manager would adopt the same attitude toward me. 
They had contempt for my ability, but respect for my 
judgment, so I wrote myself a recommendation, used all 
my actor’s skill in the art of making up, and fared forth 
as a peroxide blonde!” 


A BLOND FROM THE BUSHES 


111 


“You are Dick Brewster!” breathed Bret, raising 
himself on his elbow and staring at the erstwhile “Vester 
Cliff.” 

“I am,” smiled the “peroxide blonde.” “I had never 
pitched myself but, and I always claimed that a pitcher 
doesn’t know how to pitch until he loses his speed and 
starts using his head. But I attained my object, which 
was to replace the home I lost in starring this little lady 
in a play of her own. I take all the blame, sir, because 
I was her leading man. She was, and is, my guiding 
star.” 

“She tried me out and found me wanting, I guess,” 
despaired Bret, looking miserably from one to another. 

“I tried you out and found you true as steel and 
clean as a hound’s tooth!” said Brewster heartily. 

“What’s the difference? ^You won her, and I wish 
you luck!” Bret’s smile was a splendid effort. 

“Daddy,” cooed the voice he loved, “won’t you leave 
the room and take the colonel with you? Bret forgets 
stage names, and I’m really afraid I’ll have to propose 
myself !” 







The Sneeze Play 


When Kemble Skirm returned from his first spring 
training-trip with the Guerillas, Manager Tommy Mc- 
Nabb, who was a being without soul, told him to get a 
job in a hotel because he was indubitably the best waiter 
in captivity, having struck out on called strikes in every 
game in which he was permitted to participate. And ac- 
cording to Pete Strecker, the Guerilla scout, Skirm had 
taken the manager’s advice, and was “carrying every- 
thing before him” in an obscure Western hotel, when he 
came under Pete’s appraisive eye for the second time, just 
two years later. 

It sems that Pete was served by Skirm. In a very 
brief while the latter proved that as a waiter he was a 
most triumphant failure. Thus Pete: 

“You don’t seem to be a howling success as a grub- 
slinger, Kemble.” 

“I only get ten dollars a week for this,” grumbled 
Kemble Skirm. 

“There’s fellows can’t pitch ball any better than you 
who are pulling down thirteen hundred a season,” said 
- Pete. 

“But McNabb said I didn’t know anything about 
pitching baseball,” sighed Skirm. 

“Well, you don’t know anything about waiting, 
either,” said Pete, “and you might as well grab that extra 
money that goes with the twirler’s job.” 

And so Kemble Skirm came back to the Guerillas, to 
his own unmeasured delight and to the mild astonishment 
of Tommy McNabb. Not a man on the team would ad- 
mit that Kem was burdened with excess baggage in the 


114 


RING AND DIAMOND 


way of intellect; McNabb himself though Skirm was not 
worth the stuffing in a bubble, and something of this kind 
got embedded in the occiputs of the fans. 

But still Skirm stuck. He was the butt of all sorts 
of jokes; a compulsory dealer in staple and fancy trouble; 
the favorite of every rye-balled spirit that had the price 
multitudinously. He had little chance to shaw his ability, 
but he made good as a rescue pitcher on several occasions, 
and everybody went right on busily liking him. 

Skirm was endowed with a royal instinct for serving 
others to the utmost of his powers, doing this as a simple 
matter of course; feeilng only that all he could do was 
much less than what was needed. The one ruling idea 
that governed his whole life was to work where he was 
placed and obey those in authority. And he worked al- 
ways as if bodily needs or material comforts did not exist. 

On two or three occasions he asked McNabb to let 
him start a game. Tommy requested him explosively to 
go to thunder. Then, one fine afternoon, when Skirm 
complained that he felt like a supernumerary standing in 
the wings and watching the development of the drama, 
McNabb sent him to pitch against the hard-hitting Ball- 
busters. 

In the first inning a batter reached first base after 
two men had been retired. Skirm took a long wind-up, 
and almost before he pitched the runner raced to second, 
getting such a lead the catcher could not have potted him 
with a Krupp gun. When Skirm struck out the batter 
and came in to the bench Tommy McNabb, arms waving, 
demanded hotly: 

“Why didn’t you catch that fellow on first base?” 

“What fellow on first, boss?” 

“That fellow that stole second.” 

No one told me there was a runner on first, boss,” 
replied Skirm. 

McNabb was dazed for an instant. Then he turned 
on his infield and shouted angrily: 


THE SNEEZE PEAY 


115 


‘‘Here you, Knight, Tolin, Murphy — all of you! 
There’s one thing I want understood right now. Here- 
after whenever a runner reaches first or second or third 
bases, you fellows tell Skirm about it. I won’t have any 
more of these secrets on the team, and I mean what I 
say, an’ don’t you guys forget it!” 

Skirm took -the first opportunity to whisper to the 
choking infielders: 

“Don’t mind Tommy, if he was a little hard on you ; 
I’ll keep my eyes peeled, too, after this.” 

It seemed never to enter his head that McNabb’s 
biting sarcasm could even remotely apply to himself. He 
was, in short, the inimitable, illimitable limit. 

Warmed as if with a divine torrent of joy, Skirm 
went resolutely ahead with his game, won it handily, and 
shook hands with McNabb in pure, sublimated ignorance. 
And not one of his teammates collaborated in a laugh at 
his expense. 

Skirm’s first full-game victory was to him sweeter 
than May honey. It convinced him that he was making 
comfortable progress. Doing rescue-work was all right 
in its place, but now he felt that he was not in a place for 
it. McNabb took him on the first trip West, and did not 
let him start in a single game. Two of his most reliable 
pitchers were on the sick-list, and why he didn’t use 
Skirm was ,as Dundreary said: “One of those things no 
fellow can find out.” 

No word of protest came from Skirm; he did not so 
much as ask for another chance at the common enemy. 
He dressed and undressed with the team, warmed up a 
little every day, discussed the game after the evening 
meal, and continued to make himself a friend and philos- 
opher. Verdantly he allowed them to convince him that 
Lake Erie was the Mississippi, and the Indian pitcher who 
always beat the Guerillas a North Carolina negro. In 
every city he struck he conversed with the baseball bugs, 
the brother lodge-member, the retired player, the player 
out of a job, and just plain rooters who wanted the dis- 


116 


RING AND DIAMOND 


tinction of buying something for a bona-fide ball-player, 
thus basking in the tight of the famous. 

Fresh from the weeds, he didn’t say much, 'but he 
used his ears and eyes and did a lot of deep-sea thinking. 
Of course, he fell for a lot of merry stunts projected by 
his fellow players, but with such cheerful alacrity and un- 
failing good nature that they actually entertained doubts 
of his rusticity. 

Still, the absurdity of the idea carried its own refu- 
tation. Skirm was a simpleton — an irresistibly comical 
guy, who filled a place in the cosmos comparable to that 
occupied by a migratory beetle. He was far too amiable 
to be bright. 

Hope had not departed, but she was putting on her 
wraps when Skirm was told that he would be used against 
the Bears; and several members of the Guerrillas could 
not help remarking that McNabb’s final recognition of 
the simple-minded pitcher marked the cure of one of the 
most obstinate cases of astigmatism on record. Skirm 
had probably learned more about the game than any other 
recruit before him — ^there was so much more he did not 
know. 

With the long-looked-for chance at hand. Skirm went 
into the box that day feeling peculiarly distraught. He 
could not refuse duty; yet he was as jumpy as a bullfrog, 
and his bearing suggested that of a man who was march- 
ing to the death-ichair. 

The Bears were as pitiless as a pack of famished 
panthers. Skirm was the personification of inefficiency. 
He was wild and ineffective, and fielded his position in a 
slovenly way. 

As a matter of cold, statistical fact, he issued eight 
bases on balls and yielded nine Tiits for seven runs in the 
two innings he worked. Then McNabb sent him to the 
club-house with the information that the possibility of his 
release was now within the confines of immediate realiza- 
tion. Manager Tommy could not say more — except in 
. asterisks. 


THE SNEEZE PLAY 


117 


Time passed on, as time will; but Skirm did not' 
receive another assignment to start a game, and he was 
used but a few times toward the close of the season — in 
games that were hopelessly lost. He caromed around the 
circuit with the team, however, always hugging the hope 
of being restored to McNabb’s good opinion. And while 
the latter countered Skirm^s cordial advances with icy re- 
pulsion, nevertheless he felt the impulse of friendliness 
whenever he looked in Skirm’s soft, brown, melting, doe- 
like eyes. 

It was a raw day, cloudy and cheerless, when Skirm 
got another chance to display his wares — this time against . 
the Colonels, who were running neck-and-neck for the 
pennant with the badly crippled Guerrillas. There were 
only two more games to play, and the Colonels needed but 
one of them to tie the count — two games would assure 
them the position that would bring to them the champion- 
ship, together with the much-coveted pennant. 

This time Skirm felt abundantly equal to his under- 
taking and was keenly impatient to see what he could do. 
He began the game au^iciously enough with two strike- 
outs, arfd as the contest went on his list grew like a snow- 
ball hurrying to keep an engagement at the bottom of a 
hill. A perfect roar of delighted applause surged up 
from the crowd when he struck out the last three men, 
winning his game by a score of 7 to 2, and hanging up the 
biggest strike-out record of the season. 

Of course. Manager Tommy was happy. But in the 
midst of joy he felt the near presense of calamity, a bod- 
ing at the heart which nothing could silence. That night 
Duncan, Tommy’s star pitcher, and the only man in condi- 
tion, broke his pitching-arm in a friendly boxing-bout at a 
local athletic club. McNabb’s tiioughts turned immedi- 
ately to Skirm, because with the rest of the staff crippled 
he had nobody else to think of, and because the ex- 
waiter’s work that day had been a piece of consummate 
artistry. 


ii8 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Aside from this, the Colonels could only tie things 
up by winning. Thus, he would still have a chance to 
nurse one of his regulars into shape for the rubber, if 
there should be any necessity for playing such an impor- 
tant game. Kemble Skirm, therefore, was a Ufe-saver. 
Tommy congratulated himself on his ability to see 
through the darkest night the possibility of a dawn, and 
to find in the least-likely chance the seed of a great oppor- 
tunity. 

The spectators of the next day’s game saw Skirm 
ascend the pitcher’s mound — a tall, stoop-shouldered fel- 
low, with shuffling gait and a face as clear and ingenuous 
as a child’s. An actor making up for the part of an idealiz- 
ed farmer could not have proved fidelity to nature better 
than by reproducing Skirm’s fresh, open countenance. 

The heart of Skirm was big and red and unafraid. 
When he had retired the first two batters on strikes his 
laughter was as frank as a mountain rill. The third man 
was an easy out, Skirm getting the assist. 

In the seventh inning the Guerillas led by a score of 
1-0, but is was easy to divine that their pitcher was weak- 
ening. The Colonels started to hit the ball, and hit it 
hard; however, fast fielding held them in check. The 
game settled down to a bit of science — a chess-game in 
which every move was prearranged. Neither side scored, 
both pitchers doing gilt-edged work and every man mov- 
ing with the precision of a machine. It was thrilling — 
score 1-0 — and impossible to get a man past first.- 

. The spectators, keyed to intensity, were howling like 
Commanches. 

At length the ninth inning opened. A tense feeling 
seemed to hold the vast throng spellbound. Only the 
sandwich man in the bleachers fought the restraint; he 
yelled his wares in burlesque: “Sam handwich, gents, for 
five! Ham sandwich for five!” 

Skirm was ready to face the music; if he could pull 
through this inning, the Colonels’ last, he would exchange 
the sackcloth of the slave for the imperial purple. 


THE SNEEZE PLAY 


119 


The Colonels rattled their bats grimly, as unsociable as a 
pessimistic bulldog guarding a threatened melon-patch. 

Up came Sanderson, the do-or-die spirit exuding 
from his iron visage. Captain Murphy called encour- 
^ agement from second base and awaited the issue with a 
hope-lit serenity. 

Skirm’s victory over the batter was sweeping and 
unequivocal. As he retired the dangerous Sanderson on 
strikes, Captain Murphy felt like going out and buying 
fifty hats and taking them all off one by one to Mr. 
Kemble Skirm. 

Evans, the next man up, slashed wickedly at a bad 
one, and, missing, tried to cross the enemy by bunting. 
But Skirm came in like a lightning-flash and tossed him 
.out at first with effortless ease. 

Two down! The Guerilla rooters breathed a sigh 
of ecstacy. Manager Tommy’s face was outbeaming the 
sun. An undesired possibility of failure had been weigh- 
ing his heart down, but he had the patience of Job with- 
out Job’s gift of complaint. Not being addicted to 
futurities that could never come to pass, he felt inex- 
plicably content. 

Here was Conway, one of the brainiest hitters in the 
league and a tough man to pitch to in that he always 
made the pitcher extend himself to the utmost. 

Three balls and one strike I 

■ Conway tugged at the peak of his cap, gripped his 
bat short, ran up on the next ball, and cracked it oveT 
Captain Murphy’s head for a single. 

Just to show that their confidence was fully and 
completely at home, the loyal Guerilla fans rose up and 
cheered Skirm to the echo. They begged him, ‘‘Don’t 
mind that!” and stamped and howled till he doffed his 
cap. But when he gave the next man, Hoffman, three 
straight balls they suspended their vocal exercises to in- 
dulge in breathless prayers to the great god Mars to lau- 
rel them in glorious victory. 


120 RING AND DIAMOND ^ 

As Skirm stepped into the box to pitch the next ball 
his knees suddenly sagged, his arms dropped limply to his 
sides, his head bobbed forward and back, and then, after 
a lengthening pause — 

Ker-choo ! 

Came a terrific sneeze. 

The crowd laughed. The Colonel’s coach at first 
base growled at Conway: 

“You could have gone down on that!” 

Then, raising his voice : 

“The cold in his feet has gone to his head! Come 
on, Hoffman!” 

And Hoffman obeyed his team-mate’s injunction, for 
just as he was about to deliver the ball, Skirm had to 
sneeze again, and the fourth ball sailed perilously wide of 
the plate, only the catcher’s agility prev>enting a passed 
ball. 

Captain Gleason, of the Colonels, now faced Skirm. 
The Colonel rooters seemed to be on the verge of mad- 
ness. Men were screaming and dancing and profanely 
entreating Gleason to “Kill it!” “Hit it a mile!” ‘‘Smash 
it!” and “Knock the cover off the ball!” 

With pother twitch of the head and a perfectly au- 
dible ker-choo! Skirm jerked up a ball that did not 
come within hailing distance of the plate, but the heavy- 
hitting Gleason, not to be denied, lunged viciously for it 
and caught it on the end of his fearful bat. Up — up! 
soared the ball, a white-clad Guerilla in the right field 
speeding swiftly under it, arm upraised. Higher and 
higher th^ white sphere mounted, and then dropped 
gracefully over the fence — just three feet inside fouT 
territory. 

A Gargantuan sigh cam^ frofii the Guerilla rooters; 
but the Colonel fans were on their feet, roaring like unto 
the bulls of Bashan : 

“He’s all in!” 

“Put it there again, old Scout!” 

“Don’t let him ,walk you, Gleason !” 


THE SNEEZE PLAY 


121 


“It’s all over now!” 

These and similiar admonitions and bits of advice 
were screamed from hundreds of hoarse throats. To 
Guerilla fans it really seemed as if the mischief was as 
good as done and the doubtful issue decided. 

“Now everybody move!” barked the Colonel coach- 
ers. ‘‘He’s up in the air — ^the yellow’s showing! Go 
get him ! Go get him !” 

With wide grins the runners walked off their bases 
and began prancing along the paths; Gleason clutched his 
bat, his jaw set, and the din in the stands and bleachers 
rose to Bedlam pitch. 

Skirm gave a resolute hitch at his belt and stepped 
into the pitcher’s box. His nose wrinkled, his features 
corrugated amid a roar of laughter from players and 

spectators to whom he was the cynosure of all eyes 

And then — 

“Kerchoo!” he emitted, and rifled the ball to First- 
baseman Tolin, who tagged the dumbfounded Hoffman a 
good yard away from the base for the third and final out. 

“It wasn’t a cold, boss,” Skirm told Manager Mc- 
Nabb in the dressing-room. “I lost everything I had all 
of a sudden, and I couldn’t make that ball behave. I 
sneezed to mak0 the guys on base get reckless while I 
pretended to be trying to get the batter between 
kerchoo s.” 

“You’re a nut, Skirm,” said Manager Tommy,- chuck- 
ling — “just the kind of a nut to fit our old wagon. Get 
me?” 



V. 















c^llmost a Hero 


Before the world war made the term one of fathom- 
less contempt, Phineas Whitby was a pacifist in baseball. 
He was plaintively apologetic to his fellows and the world 
at large. As colorless as water and as cordial as a wine 
agent, the fans came to regard him with unconcealed ab- 
horrence. Even the umpires disdained him for his lack 
of aggressiveness. For Phineas Whitby was as pugna- 
cious as a sick sheep. 

When the fighting Bronchos surrounded an umpire 
with blistering invective Phineas was ever to be found re- 
mote from the scene of action, slack-lipped, unwary, and 
meditative. He recoiled with horror from the suggestion 
of an argument and was an accomplished listener to all 
kinds of conversation. When trouble reared its variegat- 
ed head he faded like the breath on a mirror. Every 
one said it was a shame that two hundred pounds of clean 
bone and sinew like Phineas should have the backbone of 
a banana. 

Tom Scollop, the Broncho captain and shortstop, 
accepted Phineas as one of the visitations of an inscrut- 
able Providence. As for himself, he was a man who 
never sought trouble, but when trouble found him he 
wasn’t one to arbitrate. 

“I like a fight^,” he often declared “not a crab 
Who does nothing else but fight, but a ball player who 
knows what is coming to him and will fight every min- 
ute to get it. Phineas is a wonderful player, hits well 
and knows how to run the bases. He has it over other 
left fielders like a tent, but why isn’t he considered a 
star like Cobb?” 


RING AND DIAMOND 


124 




Dan Lacy, the Broncho^s manager, answered the 
question in this wise: “Phineas is a pacifist, and what is 
commonly called a colorless player. He plays his posi- 
tion in the ball field, but that is all. He never has a 
battle with an umpire, nor does he climb into the grand 
stand to punch a spectator. He plays baseball like a busi- 
ness man runs his office. When the game is over he closes 
his desk for the day and keeps out of the limelight.” 

Captain and manager both thought a great deal of 
Phineas. So did the fans, but they were impolite enough 
to express all that they thought. They loved a fighter, 
and a blind man’s love for his dog was black hatred when 
compared with Phineas Whitby’s affection for peace. 

Even the sport writers declined to believe the Bron- 
cho pacifist capable of an act of aggression, and when 
Phineas, on a hunting trip in Montana during the off sea- 
son, slew a wounded deer with a stone, they commented . _ 
in this fashion: 


All doubt has been removed over that story as to 
Phineas Whitby’s slaying of a deer, Goliathwise, with a 
stone. Mr. Whitby, to refute those carping critics Who 
say his record suggests the probability of his heart break- 
ing were he at any time compelled to kill a fly, even 
though it were in self-defense, has brought out the skin of 
the deer. 

It is also well known that such a State as Montana is 
on the map. Mr. Whitby is known to have been in Mon- 
tana at the time of the Davidlike hurling of the rock. 
This mass of corroborative evidence is not to be disrupted. 

Again, when Phineas, without rebuke or reprisal, 
accepted a punch on the nose from Catcher McGuckin of 
the Pirates, because that worthy was touched with his 
spikes in blocking him off at the home plate, and sub- 
sequently told the umpire that the latter had erred in call- 
ing him safe, the baseball scribes ironically observed: 


Phineas Whitby corrected the umpire’s mistake and 
ignored McGuckin’s right hook to the nose. According 
to his code a desire for victory is not pacific or sporting. 
Neither victory nor defeat must mean too much to the 
real sportsman. The point is — playing the game. Whit- 
by plays the game. He doesn’t resort to artifices, to 


ALMOST A HERO 


125 


tricks, to lies, to schemes, to achieve victory. Nor will 
he fight for it. He plays with courteous deference to his 
opponent. 

Phineas preserved the silence of unqualified guilt. 
Perhaps he thought Sherman might have amended his fa- 
mous saying by adding that pacifism, as well as war, was 
what he said war alone was; but if he did he took no one 
into his confidence. Nothing seemed to elicit comment 
or surprise from him. 

^ The Bronchos were closing the season with the Pi- 
rates. They had the pennant won, and the game was 
not important, but it remains today the most memorable 
contest of the season. 

Phineas Whitby had been nervous before the game. 
Tom Scollop had noticed it, and told him to take the day 
off. 

“Who will play the field?’ asked Phineas quickly. 

“Schmidt,” said Scollop. “Shall I play him, old 
boy?” 

“No!” barked Phineas, and ran over to the big 
blonde-haired substitute outfielder who stood at the water 
keg. 

“Do you hate the Kaiser?” Phineas demanded 
sternly. 

“Sure!” said Schmidt in amazed perplexity. 

Phineas grunted and trotted out to left field. His 
first time at bat he was declared out on a very close de- 
cision at first base. 

“What’s that?” he howled. ‘‘Suffering cats! If 
you’re blind hang a sign on your chest and pass around 
the hat. A thief is a schoolboy in comparison with you. 
Why don’t you get a dark lantern and a jimmy and be a 
regular burglar? You are absolutely the rottenest ” 

But Tom Scollop dragged him away before he could 
finish, and the umpire was too stunned to put him out of 
the game. 

In the second inning “Spike” McGuckin, a terrific 
hitter, strode to the plate and drove the first ball pitched 
straight to left center. It would have been a home run 


126 


RING AND DIAMOND 


with the majority of left fielders, but Phineas had an un- 
canny way of being just where the ball was hit, and was 
waiting for it. 

As the teams changed sides McGuckin glared, fero- 
ciously at Phineas, who went right up to him and snarled 
in his face: “Do you want a bite of me, Fido?” 

McGuckin backed away with an expression of incred- 
ulous astonishment. 

Phineas, his second time at bat, had one strike and 
one ball. The next pitch almost cut the heart of th^ 
plate. 

“Two!” bawled the umpire. 

“Two what?” shrieked Phineas, swinging round on the 
frightened official with murder and sudden death flaming 
in his eyes. 

“Two — two — ^too high!” stammered the umpire, and 
Spike McGuckin’s lips came together in a white, rigid 
line, keeping back a terrible oath. 

Phineas walked, fooled McGuckin into calling for 
two pitch-outs, and went down on the third ball. There 
was no chance of getting him, but the Pirates’ second 
sacker, accustomed to taking unwarranted liberties with 
the meekest man in the league, fell on top^ of him with 
unnecessary force and gave him a wicked jab in the neck 
with the ball. 

Phineas leaped to his feet with an inarticulate cry of 
commingled rage and joy. The second baseman went 
down from a terrible punch on the jaw, with a look of 
startled wonder in his eyes. He fell full length on the 
ground and lay there without moving. 

Scollop and his Broncohs had all they could do to 
drag Phineas off his prostrate victim. He had to leave 
the field, but he was still in uniform when his teammates 
reached the clubhouse after the game. 

“The crowd is still yelling for you, old boy!” hailed 
Scollop, jovially slapping him on the back. ‘‘They’ve 
gone crazy over you!” 


ALMOST A HERO 


127 


The light in Phineas Whitby’s eyes was not alto- 
gether a pleasant one. “Do you man to tell me I’m 
crazy?” he snarled. 

“Gripes, no! No!” 

Phineas was on his feet, his nostrils dilated and a 
savage glitter in his eyes. “Is there anybody here who 
says that I can’t play ball?” 

No one answered and he sat down again. 

“What’s the matter, old boy?” quavered Tom Scol- 
lop. 

“I want a chance to start a fight with some one !” ex- 
claimed Phineas. 

“Fine!” cried Scollop. “McGuckin wants to meet 
you tonight he says he’s going to beat you up for what 
you pulled in the game. He’ll be at the coal wharf to- 
night at nine. Can I be your second? Will you fight 
him?” 

Phineas was on his feet again, his fists balled, his 
chest heaving. “Sure I’ll fight him! I’ll kill him!” His 
voice tanged like a knife blade. “Tell him I’ll be on 
hand> and that you’ll be my second!” 

That night, however, when nine o’clock came Tom 
Scollop found Phineas in bed at their hotel, sleeping 
peacefully. 

“Don’t you know the time?” he asked. “McGuckin’s 
waiting for us!” 

“Let him wait,” murmured Phineas drowsily. 
“There’s a dentist in the next room .^ho yanked my tooth, 
and I’m awfully tired now. Good night, Tom!” 

And ere Scollop fitted the apartment Phineas 
Whitby was again sleeping peacefully. 


,..v ; 

^ ' 4 * 


'.. r •- 






,<••- • V 

'*.-,1 •. i ‘‘ J , 


/ 

%' 


•>» 


/*» ,* t 


- ■• • 





V 


The Iron Man 


From the start, The Iron Man was as much of a mys- 
tery to the public as he was to the heavy hitters of oppos- 
ing teams. After he had made good with the Occiden- 
tals, he formed a habit of melting into his background, 
and successfully parried every attempt to draw him out 
of his shell. He was not much seen at close range even 
by his fellow players ; he was intimate with no one but 
Captain Bassett, though I had the very unusual fortune of 
being the only newspaper man he would talk with. At 
that, he had as much use for press notices as a mermaid 
has for an umbrella. 

From one end of the country to the other, he was the 
constant subject of wondering speculation. It was said 
by some that he sought seclusion because he was rude and 
cultureless; others declared that he was proud and arro- 
gant; and one baseball writer, putting the spurs to his 
imagination, said his great pitching demanded every pos- 
sible particle of his nervous .energy, and he believed that 
in hand-shaking, and in every sort of fleshy contact, a 
certain portion, of this energy passed oif. According to 
this benevolent scribe, he was like Sir Henry Irving who 
for the three last hours before playing a difficult and try- 
ing part, would not shake hands with, nor even speak to, 
any one. 

All this was interesting in the last degree, but very 
far from the truth and grossly inconsistent with The Iron 
Man’s character. From what I saw of him, there was 
nothing of the faddist or freak in his make-up. Simplic- 
ity was his most striking quality. His modesty made it 
difficult for the public to know much about him, although 


130 


RING AND DIAMOND 


there were times when I could have sworn he found his 
permanent invisibility an unutterable bore. He was tall, 
and his smooth, intellectual looking face, with, its broad 
high forehead, gave him the appearance of a clergyman 
or tutor. His voice was low and pleasant, and though 
usually a silent man, he was a charming talker. 

John Welford was the iron man’s name, but the 
bleachers never called him anything but “The Iron Man.” 
And in spite of his aloofness, ^hey fairly worshipped him. 
He had gone through his first season like a tried veteran, 
pulling out thirty-one victories and sustaining only six- 
teen defeats; and he had pitched and won two days in 
succession when the Occidents appeared to have a chance 
for the pennant. The team went ta pieces toward the 
end of the race when a black chapter of accidents took 
three of its heaviest hitters out of the game. When, at 
the end of the season Captain Bassett put three more 
scouts on hi-s list in a half-hearted hope of finding some 
one nearly like Welford, I heard The Iron Man plead for 
his brother: 

‘‘Give my brother Arthur a trial. Cap,” he said. 
“He’s as good now as I am, or ever hope to be. He’s 
weaving spells in the Southern League to be near the old 
folks, and he won’t listen to any offers that will bring him 
away. But if you say so. I’ll write to him. He’ll come 
for me, and between us we’ll^just about win the pennant 
for you.” 

Bassett smiled and said, “I’ll think about it.” I saw 
a look of disappointment on The Iron Man’s face, but he 
said nothing as he turned away. 

Captain Bassett must have forgotten all about The 
Iron Man’s brother in the . discovery of one, Rudolph 
Obert, a tall and ungainly recruit from one of the Pacific 
Coast leagues who had set the bushes on fire with his 
twirling. On the Spring training trip Obert loomed up 
as an unspeakably precious “find.” His style and man- 
ner were faintly suggestive of The Iron Man himself, and 
Captain Bassett found his work transcendently stimulat- 


THE IRON MAN 


131 


ing, while the team entered very warmly into his opinion 
that Obert would create as much of a sensation as Wel- 
ford had the previous year. 

In my declared failure to see why Obert should be 
compared with The Iron Man I said the former was an in- 
tellectual dwarf with nbt a soupcon of starch in his spine. 
To me, Obert looked as one launched unwillingly into the 
world, mentally unfit for the business of living; his atti- 
tude was one of wistful and uncomprehending acquiscence 
in the fact of being. I expressed my preference for an- 
other recruit, Kreider, a youth of some eighteen summers, 
with a gentle velvety fuzz on his upper lip and the rudi- 
ments of an excelsior development on either jaw. 

The Iron Man pitched the first game of the regular 
season against the Tigers, and if he was ever a wonder- 
ful pitcher he was that day, for he had the Bfg Cat nine 
the worst rattled and bewildered ball team that ever ap- 
peared on a diamond. Through seven innings he sent 
them back to the bench hitless — and his support was not 
the best. Time and again he placed himself in a “hole” 
to permit his catcher, Harry Loftus, to pick off stealing 
base runners. Four hits were all. the enemy could col- 
lect from his delivery, and half of these might have been 
eaten up by the infield had it been July weather. 

It was a rare treat to see the Iron Man pitch. One 
of his principal assets was control; but there was some- 
thing in his control besides the ability to split the plate. 
He worked the corners and had the command to make the 
batter hit at balls that were not over the plate. He knew 
that" when a pitcher establishes a reputation for control 
and seldom hits anyone, the players feel that they need not 
be afraid of being hit, arid so he drove them away from 
the plate with the ‘‘bean” ball, and was just wild enough 
to make the man at the bat jump out of the box on every 
ball pitched. 

The widely heralded Obert pitched ^e second game 
against the Tigers; and he got it where the Adam’s apple 
flourishes and the celluloid is hung. For three innings 


132 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Providence guarded him, and he was iEsop’s proud ass in 
the lion’s skin. Three singles, a double, and two triples 
came hot off the Tiger bats in the fourth inning, and he 
awoke from his dreams of a mother-of-pearl limousine. 
His face went white to the roots of his hair; he seemed 
to shrink and wither away inside his clothes. With a 
runner on third and nobody out, the next batter slashed 
a torrid^ hit at him. He gave tongue to an incoherent 
cry and — ducked ! 

The fans rose up and howled. Their new phenom 
was a quitter! That was as clear as daylight now; the 
conviction was as sudden as a hailstorm bursting over a 
field of grain, and it w^ as disastrous to their illusions. 

“Take him out 1” they shrieked. 

But Obert did not wait to be taken out; he walked 
to the bench before Captain Bassett could superintend 
the obsequies of his stricken hopes. The Tigers had 
given him enough of big league base ball — he was filled 
to the last stage of repletion. 

Fortunately for the Occidentals, Kreider made good,- 
and with The Iron Man and the three veterans, Enderby, 
McBride and Ferguson^ going along nicely, Bassett’s men 
kept right up in the lead until July, when they slid from 
second to fifth place inside of a week. Enderby and Mc- 
bride were on the hospital list, and the bulk of the work 
fell on The Iron Man, with Ferguson and Kreider doing 
their share nobly. 

Fighting every inch of the way, the Occidentals crept 
from fifth to fourth, and then, defeating the Invincibles 
four straight, leaped into third place, hot on the heels of 
the Tigers, whose place at the top had been snatched 
away by the Puritans, a combination of young and old 
blood that was making the base ball public rub its eyes 
and wonder. By the middle of August, the Tigers were 
overhauled, and when September was ushered in the Occi- 
dentals had left^hem in the ruck and were grappling with 
the Puritans, who were so amazed at being' overtaken by 
^ team they had considered out of the race that they 


THE IRON MAN 


133 


dropped three straight games to the tail-enders; and 
awoke one morning to find the end of the season two days 
off and three games to play with the team that had caught 
th^ in the stretch — Bassett’s Occidentals! 

Now, the men under the leadership of Captain Bas- 
sett were only two games behind, and they had a chance 
of bringing their plucky, uphill fight to a glorious close — 
if they won all three games! True, the task was a pro- 
digious one, but they had solved too many unexpectedly 
serious problems during the gruelling finish to be dis- 
mayed; and if the truth be told, they felt in every fibre of 
their being that they could not tpit win the first two 
games of the series, only praying that they would not 
have to play a double header on the first day. 

For they were totally convinced that The Iron Man, ^ 
despite the enormous burden he had borne successfully 
throughout the race, would score two victories over the 
Puritans even if he were called upon to pitch the double 
header. 

This sublime sort of confidence was, strange to say, 
fully shared by the fan^ who could not be^ persuaded that 
The Iron Man was burdened with a sense of physical fa- 
tigue. It was so discouragingly seldom that the Occiden- 
tals had a look-in for the pennant that they could not 
deny themselves the comfortable thought that they had 
more than a good chance to carry off the championship. 

The Puritans took another view of . the situation. 
What if The Iron Man could take two games from them — 
and they were not prepared to admit that he could — 
hadn’t they demonstrated at all times that they could beat 
the Occidentals with any other pitcher in the box? A 
glance at the box scores would show how they had fat- 
tened their batting averages at the expense of Enderby, 
McBride, Ferguson et al ; an^that they could repeat their 
past performances they hadn’t the wraith of a doubt." 
The Occidentals were a good, game team, but they had 
spurted too late. That was all. And — yes, and they 
might beat The Iron Man at this time, for he had pitched 


134 RING AND DIAMOND 

forty-six games, winning forty-one and losing five, and 
it was just possible that he was all in. In other words, 
The Iron Man might have rusted; perhaps he was now 
only a lath painted to look like iron. ^ 

Captain Bassett contented himself with saying that 
the Occidentals would do their best; that the team’s rec- 
ord spoke for itself, and that The Iron Man would posi- 
tively pitch two games out of the remaining three that 
were to be played. Then he wrapped himself in a cloak 
of reserve, refusing to rise to any conversational bait. 

It was decided to play the double-header last. 
Captain-Manager Reynolds, of the Puritans, laughingly 
agreed to this, saying that while he had counted on win- 
ning the double-header the first day it would be merely a 
pleasure postponed, and would lose nothing by waiting. 

“Your sole reliance,” said he to Bassett, “is The Iron 
Man, and he will have to pitch and win three games to 
snatch the pennant from us. He’s got to be more than a 
man to do that, and we shall prove unmistakably that he 
is human and normal.” 

The crowd that attended the first game was a record- 
breaker. From the early forenoon people had stood in 
line before the ticket windows, and by the time the game 
started there was not an inch of unoccupied space in 
bleachers or grandstand. The baseball germ is an insid- 
ious insect. It knows no class and bites with the same 
vehemence bootblacks and bankers, bricklayers and brok- 
ers, barbers and billionaires. 

True .to prediction and promise. The Iron Man went 
into the box for the Occidentals. After the sixth inning, 
his smile was large enough to make the rest of his face of 
little consequence. He worked like a Trojan, but he won 
his game and showed that he knew the alpha and omega 
of the pitcher’s art. The final score was 5 to 0, and 
though the Puritans threatened to score on several occa- 
sions, they wei^ never dangerous. 


THE IRON MAN 


135 


To my own amazement, and the envy of my fellow 
scribes, The Iron Man granted me an interview after the 
game. And this is what he said : 

“The Puritans came near getting me more than 
once, but I am not like most pitchers. Some pitchers 
work harder and faster when they are being hit; they 
seem to think that in order to stop a batting rally they 
are obliged to shut their eyes and blaze every ball 
through. They lose sight of the fact that there is some- 
thing to the pitching game besides speed. The one thing 
I always bear in mind is that the man at bat is as anxious 
to make good as I am. No matter how worried I may 
feel at the sight of a good hitter, I always tell myself 
that the batter is just as shaky. If pitchers would keep 
this in mind and pitch accordingly, there would not be so 
many ascensions. Usually the twirler who is ballooning 
never thinks of a change of pace, but just wheels them in 
as fast as he can, and, in the majority of cases, right 
through the middle of the plate. It is no wonder he gets 
hit, and it is a surprise he ever retires the side. Every 
pitcher gets a lacing once in a, while, and sometimes 
oftener, but there is no excuse for a man forgetting how 
to pitch when the enemy is hitting him.” 

In some quarters this preachment was considered 
“true dope,” but the Puritans and their followers seemed 
to regard it as a bit of colossal conceit. Captain Rey- 
nolds glared at the base ball reporters when questioned 
about the interview, and his lips writhed on the verge of 
unconsidered speech. He longed to tell them that The 
Iran Mon had virtually proclaimed himself immune from 
defeat, but wisely held his tongue. 

Next day found the world a blue and laughing para- 
dise. The crowds were out early, for the first game was 
scheduled to begin at 1.30 P. M. At Occidental Park the 
very air pulsed with expectancy. In bleachers and grand- 
stand unblinking eyes were fastened upon the gladiators in 
the field, for their movements fascinated and were fol- 
lowed as closely as ever a watchful cat scanned her prey. 


136 


RING AND DIAMOND 


A yell, long and piercing enough to shatter the 
dreams of long-buried dead, went up as The Iron Man 
took his place in the box. The ball seemed to annoy 
him and he rolled it nervously in his hands. Suddenly 
there was a writhing, a whip-like motion of his brawny 
arm, a step forward — and the sound of a swiftly moving 
body striking upon leather. The battle was on. 

The multiform noises of the crowd, blending in a 
single dull roar, continued throughout the game, The 
Iron Man went through inning after inning without a 
sign of faltering. The effort of the Puritans to solve his 
delivery were humiliatingly unsuccessful. As the game 
progressed. The Iron Man made more patent the self- 
evident truth that he held the enemy in the palm of his 
hand. He spoke no word, exchanged none of his usual 
badinage with his team-mates, but kept up his phenomen- 
al pitching as if it were a most uncommonly engrossing 
task. I 

Man after man flayed the innocent atmosphere with 
savagn vigor, and some looked at the man on the mound 
and laughed. But they did not fail to note that he never, 
smiled, and that his eyes were of that cold, glinting sort 
that can look into the tubular extreme of a Colt’s with- 
out batting an eyelash. 

It all wound up as merrily as the proverbial wedding 
bells — for the Occidentals. They won the game by a 
score of 7 to 0, and not once during the contest had a 
Puritan spike menaced the home plate. The Iron Man 
had yielded three scratch hits and struck out fourteen 
men. That occasion was more than memorable — it was 
unforgettable. Occidental rooters were drunk with vic- 
tory, and their cheers boomed across the diamond like 
salvos of artillery. 

The Puritans, stunned by their inability to hit The 
Iron Man, took solace from the fact that they could 
slaughter any other pitcher the Occidentals could put on 
the firing lines. The possibility of The Iron Man^ pitch- 
ing the third game — going out on that mound after a 


THE IRON MAN 


137 


fifteen-minute rest for another nine innings at the least — 
was not astonishingly remote, but it was killingly comi- 
cal; they almost wished the overworked twirler would 
scale the pitching peak again so that they could whet 
their appetite for revenge. 

The umpire consulted his watch; the Occidentals 
ran out to their positions, and — The Iron Man strode to 
the middle of the diamond. The frenzied fans again 
jerked themselves to their feet, and their voices sounded 
like heavy guns playing a deep diapason of war. With all 
his victories The Iron Man was still unsatisfied. It will 
be recalled that Alexander suffered from the same com- 
plaint. 

“Here goes the great Iron Man!” laughed Captain 
Reynolds, and settled back to enjoy the carnage he felt 
sure would follow the wonderful twirler’s reappearance in 
the box. 

Apparently, The Iron Man was a new problem, and a 
startling one. For the first two innings the wide-eyed 
Puritans took three futile swings at the horsehide-covered 
sphere and walked dazedly to the bench. From that on 
up till the fifth inning The Iron Man retired thenu^with 
praiseworthy regularity. He still seemed to be the liv- 
ing embodiment of all pitching perfection. 

Dawson, the Puritan’s hard-hitting left fielder, came 
to the bat. He crouched over the plate, moving his bat 
in little concentric circles. The Iron Man faced him with 
a smile, bending sidewise to catch the signal. 

There were two out, but it was apparent to the most 
undiscerning than Dawson meant to do or die. He 
ignored a fast out-shoot, refused to bite on a high in- 
shoot, and grinned in a manner that seemed to say it 
was nothing short of intolerable 'nonsense to attempt to 
deceive him. 

The Iron Man studied his opponent; he realized that 
he was a shrewd man ; but he had met shrewd men before. 
The ball sped straight and swift as an arrow to the plate. 
Dawson lashed at it savagely, and by some trick of fate 


138 


RING AND DIAMOND 


or superhuman skill sent a hot line drive burning to the 
box. A sickening sound as of splintering bone reached 
the farthest end of the bleachers, and before the dumb- 
founded multitude could realize that the ball had left the 
Iron Man’s hands they saw him sink to his knees, clawing 
feebly at the air, then roll over on his back and stiffen out 
like a corpse, the blood gushing from a gaping wound in 
his forehead. 

The stunned silence that ensued was broken by a 
hoarse roar of indignation from the local fans, for the 
doubt had pierced every mind almost simultaneously: 
W^s it an accident? They did not reason logically that 
such a play, however carefully planned, would ninety- 
nine times and a half out of a hundred be an absolute im- 
possibility; they did not reason at all, and rage and indig- 
nation surged together — rage that the thing had hap- 
pened; indignation that Dawson, whether intentionally or 
accidentally, had been the cause of it happening. I 
cannot to this day conceive a mob scene more distressing 
to the imagination than that which would have followed 
but for the prompt action of players and police in getting 
The Iron Man and the chalk-faced Dawson off the field. 

Like one invisibly winged. Captain Reynolds flew up 
to the press box. “I want you boys to not be too hard on 
poor Dawson,” he cried. “He won’t be able to finish the 
game, for he is a nervous wreck. We are all sorry this 
thing happened. I wouldn’t have had it happen for a 
dozen pennants !” 

After a short wait, the Occidentals went back to 
their positions, but the pitcher’s box remained vacant. 

Captain Bassett turned to the Puritan leader. 

“We’ll have to ask for a moment’s grace, Reynolds,” 
he said. “Our pitcher will be with us in a minute or 
two.” 

His tone was casual, no trace in it of an anger which 
might have been justified. 

“Pm afraid we can’t wait till you warm up a new 
pitcher,” Reynolds answered. 


THE IRON MAN 


139 


We’re not changing pitchers, Reynolds. We are 
only — Ah, here he is now!” 

Out from a door near the players’ bench stepped a 
tall, sinewy figure, with a head swathed in bandages. It 
was The Iron Man, and he was going to finish the game ! 

Captain Reynolds started, stared incredulously and 
breathed a desolate sigh; and the black reek of despair 
closed over him utterly. This superhuman slabman was 
really and truly an iron man and he felt an unquenchable 
yearning to flee from the defeat he knew was in store. 
Of course he would not give up until the last man was 
out, but he foresaw only too vividly the inevitable. 

Occidental rooters were on their feet shrieking, 
stamping, glaring at that familiar figure in the pitcher’s 
box in pop-eyed adoration. Their idol was worse than 
Micawber’s creditors for a sweet ability to stick; they 
were convinced that the day of miracles had not passed. 
The Iron Man, besides achieving the impossible, had 
shown them there was as much heroism in the world now 
as there was when Peter the Hermit went preaching and 
plumed knights tilted. 

The Puritans gamely faced the cyclone they found 
occupying the box and were mowed down like standing 
grain. No matter how profoundly they studied'" this 
pitcher, no matter how observantly they watched his way 
and methods, they felt continually that he was the “Pot 
o’ Gold at the rainbow’s end — the Will o’ the Wisp” of 
baseball. The Iron Man was Enigma — exception ^to 
every rule which guides instinctive judgment of individ- 
uals. 

The last Puritan made three ferocious ineffectual 
swings at the elusive sphere, the grandstand rose, howl- 
ing its delight; the bleachers poured onto the field; and 
all was confusion, hubbub, joy! 

Racing to the club house ahead of the players and the 
crowd, I waited in Captain Bassett’s private room for 
the big story I knew would be forthcoming. Perhaps ten 
minutes later Bassett and The Iron Man came in. At 


140 


RING AND DIAMOND 


sight of me the Captain smothered an oath that leaped to 
his lips, and spoke swiftly to John Welford, who, without 
so much as a word to me, turned to leave the room. Ifis 
hand was on the knob when the door leading to the 
shower bath suddenly opened and — John Welford, his 
head covered with blood-stained bandages, came falter- 
ingly in and sank into a chair. 

The unguessed truth burst upon me with the paralyz- 
ing suddenness of on .electirc shock. 

“Well, now you know, Mr. Butterinsky/^ said Bas- 
sett, with a sickly grin. “This gentleman who finished 
the game is Arthur Welford, John’s twin brother. They 
are as like in pitching qualities as they are in physical 
aspect. John pitched yesterday’s game, and Arthur 
worked in the first game this afternoon. They were to 
share the game between them anyhow, and the accident, 
while painful to John, did not disturb any of the plans we 
had made.” 

“But who went through this season’s work?” I 
asked, as Arthur Welford tore the bandages from his un- 
injured head and went whistling into the shower bath. 
‘‘Have you been working this trick from the beginning?” 

“No,” said Bassett, “John was the Iron Man last 
y^ar, but this year — ^well, this year The Iron Man was 
twins!” 


Fate and a Foul 


Manley was first in the bread line that swung like a 
blown pennant from the doors of the Sunday Breakfast 
Union. He had been waiting, with hundreds of others, 
for an hour and a half for the missioners to open the 
doors upon the buns and hot coffee. Here in the line 
with him was every sort of craft from the heaving seas 
of circumstance — the most cosmopolitan assemblage 
under the sun. 

As the plain clothes men passed down the line squint- 
ing sharply at each one, Manley caught flowing, colorful 
gossip from the far corners of the world. He learned 
that “Nick, the Bite” didn’t die of pleurisy in a ’Frisco 
prison, but was out and at work; that it now was warm 
and “comfy” in San Antonio; that the cops in Cincinnati 
were gentlemen, and those in New York were not; that 
the hardest place in the world to go broke in was London. 
He shared his last pinch of “makins” with the only chum 
he had picked up, a frail youth whose brilliant eyes and 
roselike- flush betrayed his bondage to consumption to all 
who knew its fatal impress. 

\ A plain clothes man snatched a red-headed, lumber- 
ing hulk of a man from near the head of the line, pro- 
claiming .him to be a stick-up man wanted at headquar- 
■ ters. Only a few minutes before, Manley had heard the 
prisoner talking very learnedly and polysyllabically upon 
diseases of the brain. The arrest emphasized an already 
familiar fact: the line held men from all professions and 
every walk of life. 

Every walk of life? He wondered vaguely if there 
were any baseball players within the sound of his voice; 


142 


RING AND DIAMOND 


any athl6t6S of the diamond, who, like himself, had cast 
themselves outside the cantonments of decent society for 
the sodden companionship of John Barleycorn. There 
was a comparatively recent time when he, Manley, found 
life an upholstered Pullman. Idolized by press and pub- 
lic, the leading pitcher of his day, he had been mightily 
scornful of the weaknesses of such failures as were now 
his acknowledged associates. Why, it seemed only yes- 
terday that he was on the pinnacle of success, contemptu- 
ous of the infirmity which had brought him low, careless 
of the plaudits of worshipful throngs. He had won two 
pennants for old Colonel McCaulley, the owner of the 
Blue Sox, and for a poignantly happy interval — before he 
emulated the example of Humpty Dumpty — Kathryn, the 
magnate’s daughter, was his promised wife. 

Kathryn McCaulley was a girl of rare and exotic 
beauty, with golden tresses and eyes as brown as old Oc- 
tober ale. And she had loved him and clung to him until 
he had overstepped the boundaries of self-respect, plung- 
ing headlong into a life of dissipation. Thenceforth his 
rendition of the titular role of “A Fool and His Money” 
was consummately artistic. A human wreck, he drifted 
about with the flotsam of the world — to Cuba, Porto Rico, 
China, Alaska, working at anything, more often at noth- 
ing. And now he, who once was the incomparable beau 
ideal of baseball pitchers, with all his good resolves van- 
ished like clutched soap bubbles, stood at the head of the 
bread line, neither better nor worse than some of the men 
he preceded. 

In the book of life he had registered himself, “Wil- 
liam Ewing Manley, Bum.” What a fool he had been! 
For the delirum of the hellish brew that had stolen his 
brains and sapped his bodily vigor, he had mocked de- 
cency, deserted friends, scorned the priceless jewel of a 
woman’s true love. He hoped — and it was not easy to 
nourish the hope with sincerity — ^that Kathryn had for- 
gotten him, — and yes, and had married a worthier man. 
Yet, withal, the thought that she might still love him, had 


FATE AND A FOUL 


143 


sometimes come to him as the dim, dazzling prospect of 
a heaven hardly to be believed in — as a dream of “joy past 
joy.” 

“Will!” 

That voice — and calling his name! His jaw hung 
pendant and his eyes popped with a bullfrog stare. 
Rats, man, it cojildn’t be Kathryn’s voice ; what would she 
be doing in the bread line? It was the booze again; after 
a while he would hear a band of music playing in the 
distance, and the far-off chimes of sad-toned bells. He 
had experienced it all before and knew precisely what to 
expect. If they would only open the doors and let him 
at the hot coffee! 

“Will!” 

It was Kathryn’s voice ! And it seemed as though a 
thousand other voices, taking on all the music of the 
spheres, were calling to him. 

“Can I see you for a moment. Will?” 

There she stood, her face glowing, the radiance from 
her eyes positively blinding him. Jones, his bread-line 
pal, gasped and unconsciously bared his head, for her 
beauty shone as a church window glows from a soft altar 
light within. 

Manley’s face was ashen, his lips twitching. He 
tried to speak, but his voice broke and flattened in his 
throat like the tones of an over-delighted child. 

Jones gave him a shove from behind. 

“Talk, yeh boob!” he admonished, chuckling audibly, 
and then, as-if remembering the gravity of the occasion, 
suddenly became portentously solemn. 

“Kath — Kathryn!” quavered Manley, in a burst of 
ecstacy; then stood with clenched hands, erect and silent, 
a nameless fear tearing at his heart. 

“Do you want me to — to make a try?” he asked husk- 
ily when he had found a voice. 

“I want the Blue Sox to win a pennant,” she mur- 
mured in a low, delectably sweet voice. “Will you come 


144 


RING AND DIAMOND 


with me to father?” she added, ignoring the buzz of ex- 
citement that was magnetizing the air-waves about them. 

“I will !” and the leader of the bread line gave up his 
place and stood beside her. 

“Good boy!” applauded Jones. “Scoot pronto, Bill. 
Don’t think about me^ — you know what I’m up against. 
Beat it, d’ye hear?” 

Kathryn’s small head was proudly poised on her 
faultless -shoulders as they moved off, though she walked 
by the side of a tramp. 

Unconscious of the admiring glances that followed 
every step' of her lithe, young figure, Kathryn McCaulley 
hurried her unkempt companion along at such a pace 
that there was only time for an elliptic interchange of 
words and silences. Arrived at her home, she ushered 
Manley into the drawing room and went in search of her 
father. 

“Well, Billy Manley!” said a hearty voice, and Col- 
onel McCaulley came up to him and pressed his hand in 
the profound sympathy of perfect understanding. He 
was a large, florid man, heavily built, square-jawed> and 
with the deep, scrutinous eyes of one aware of his own 
power and accustomed to enforce it. “It took Kathryn 
to dig you up, didn’t it? I called you a dirty loafer, lad, 
but she said I couldn’t win a. pennant without you. I 
haven’t, and so I thought I’d get you back if I could find 
you. Are you done with strong drink?” 

“Colonel,” said Manley, “if you really want me back 
with the Blue Sox — if you think I am any good at all — 
let me take a bath and lend me a suit of your clothes. I 
don’t want to see Kathryn again when I’m looking and 
feeling like — this. I’ll never touch another drop of 
liquor, so help me God !” 

“Live up to that, Billy, and you’ll never regn’et it. It 
is not only for your own sake and my sake, but it is — ” 

“For Kathryn’s sake,” said Manley, and they shook 
hands, looking steadily into each other’s moist eyes. 


FATE AND A FOUL 


145 


Bathed and shaved, attired in clean linen and a gray 
business suit, the erstwhile” leader of the bread line did 
not look any more disreputable than an athletic young 
society man recovering from a week’s carouse, albeit his 
eyes were as lucent as twin diamonds and keen as the edge 
of a sword. He had a modest share of general and classi- 
cal culture, and the first evening he spent with the Col- 
onel and Kathryn was unmarked by embarrassment or 
gaucherie on his part. Considering his sudden transla- 
tion from hunger and squalor to luxury, love and friend- 
ship, he acquitted himself with entire credit. Once, 
when the Colonel left him alone with Kathryn, he felt like 
an early Christian martyr waiting for the last call to the 
lions, and he was wordlessly grateful for the delicate tact 
with which this precious girl set him at ease. 

The third day of his reclamation saw Maniey in train- 
ing, working as hard to condition himself as a prize fighter 
with an important ring engagement. Sustained and 
cheered by the unfaltering trust of the sweetest girl in 
the world, he plugged away in comradely isolation, seek- 
ing the strength and suppleness he had thrown away. Re- 
sults at first were bitterly unprofitable, but there came a 
time when the delicious elation of physical fitness made 
the seemingly impossible little more than an ordinary, 
before-breakfast task. So when spring rolled around and 
the Blue Sox left for the South, Manley was given charge 
of the youngsters on the pitching staff. 

Colonel McCaulley’s pulse quickened electrically 
when he saw Manley working with the future greats, to 
whom he was an infinitely good-natured demigod. 
.Warming up on the sun-bathed field, they hung upon his 
words. 

“I am to teach you something you are not supposed 
to know, boys,” said Manley. “It is gfesumed that I 
know a little more about the game than you, but if you 
think I’m making a mistake, don’t hesitate to tell me. I 
do not consider candor the outward and visible sign of an 


RING AND DIAMOND 



inward and hereditary tendency toward vulgarity, and I 
hope we will be quite frank with one another. 

Two pitchers faced two catchers. 

“Don’t try fancy tricks,” warned Manley. “I’m just 

looking you over.” 

Not half a dozen balls had been tossed when Manley 
emitted a roar. One pitcher, after delivering the ball, 
had turned his back to the catcher. 

“That’s bad baseball,” said Manley. "Some day a 
batter will ram one at your feet or lace one at the back of 
your head if you do that in a game. Do it like this.” 

He grabbed the ball and shot it to the catcher with 
terrific speed, immediately taking three quick steps and 
crouching with outstretched hands, like an infielder. 

“You are apt to get touched up,” he continued, “and 
you must be ready for anything all the time. Another 
thing, my friend. Don’t stand with your feet too far 
apart. You’ll lose your speed if you do. And don’t 
wind up with a jerky, short-arm movement. Hold the 
ball at arm’s length and face the batter. Here, let me 
show you.” 

Then Manley gave a demonstration of his skill, call- 
ing out the sort of ball to be delivered and exhibiting stu- 
pendous speed and control in throwing it, all the while 
illustrating the good and bad features of the pitch. 

^ There was a strange gleam in Colonel McCaulley’s* 
eyes as he left the ball field that afternoon. “Billy’s as 
good as ever,” he chuckled to himself, “or I don’t know 
baseball from bean bag. It’s all over but the shouting, 
and the shouting will be done by the Blue Sox.” 

The old members of the team were careful observers, 
too, and had for some time appreciated the fact that as 
he rounded the youngsters into shape Manley himself was 
returning to hisr old invincible form. By some occult 
lapsus memorae they forgot they had ever been without 
his services; they were so accustomed to winning pen- 
nants when he was with them that they looked upon the 
capture of the league bunting as something inevitable and 


FATE AND A FOUL 


147 


foreordained. Manley’s return to form was the voice of 
Destiny calling to them from unknown vasts. 

The first game of the season found the Blue Sox 
pitted against the Tigers, their most formidable rivals, 
and last year’s pennant winners. After a lapse of two 
years, Billy Manley showed that the magic of his right 
arm. hadn’t left him. His curves, courage and general- 
ship were qualities that caused to Tigers to lose the initial 
game of the season. It was his masterly pitching alone 
that gave the victory to the Blue Sox, whose errors put 
him in more than one hole from which there was no es- 
cape except by marvelously clever pitching. 

Manley’s auspicious beginning was viewed by Colonel 
McCaulley with deep and glad approval. He congratu- 
lated himself that, as he expressed it, “Caesar was him- 
self again.” Signs were not wanting that the pennant 
race would be a hot one,, but with Manley going right — 
and he had finished his first game cool, placid and with 
stamina to spare — there seemed to be no chance for any 
team except the Blue Sox. 

By the middle of July the Blue Sox led the leagu© by 
a handsome margin and were playing unbeatable ball. 
Manley was their mainstay in the box. When the Blue 
Sox ultimately walked away with the pennant, sporting 
writers began to speculate on how many games this peer- 
less pitcher would twirl in the world’s series, for all knew 
that that titanic struggle would be epochal. 

And it was. The Orioles, pennant winners in the 
rival league, were a truly remarkable aggregation of ball 
tossers. Incidentally, their confidence in their ability io 
defeat the Blue Sox was supreme and unshakable. They 
had a pitching staff for the struggle, it was asserted, such 
as never had been gathered to one team. Their mana- 
ger, “Cub” Scott, was one of the greatest tacticians in the 
game, a sideline wildcat, fighting with his team, playing 
each move in his head and shouting the never-say-die bat- 
tle cry. He bought his timber in the baseball marts, but 
he also knew how to develop it, for the cost of his stone- 


148 


RING AND DIAMOND 


wall infield was counted in railroad fares, telegrams and 
postage stamps. In the eyes of his admirers, he was the 
apotheosis of baseball brains. 

However, nothing could shake Colonel McCaulley’s 
conviction that Manley in himself was a match for the 
finest pitching staff ever collected under one managerial 
tent. 

“Billy,” said he with animation, “is the most durable 
man in baseball. He has a steel piston pitching rod, and 
he never sways when the battle breaks against him. He 
tightens up with every hit the enemy makes. He is an 
exceptionally dangerous man at the bat, and the best field- 
ing pitcher in the game.” 

It was a treat to hear the ox-hearted CoJLpnel say this 
with ‘the air of one who delivers a state secret, let come 
what may. 

At the same time, in the first game of the world’s 
series, Manley justified the encomiums on his ability. He 
drove in the only run scored during the game with a 
slashing double, and shut out his distinguished opponents 
with four hits. For all that, the second game went to the 
Orioles by a one-sided score, and then Manley came back 
at them again, winning by a score of 6 to 3. 

“That’s our Billy for you!” the Colonel exultantly 
told the newspaper men. “He’s a giant with thews of 
steel and a woman’s heart; the courage of a lion and the 
courtesy of a courtier. Just wait till tomorrow — then 
you’ll see.” 

And on the morrow they saw — and with wordless 
wonder — that Manley was booked to pitch the fourth 
game of the series! 

The Colonel made this move at Manley’s specific re- 
quest, for the czar of pitchers wanted to surprise the foe 
and use his superb strength while they were rattled, in- 
credulous and smarting under defeat. 

Some people sagely shook their heads and said it 
wasn’t in human nature for Manley to win the game, 
while others hailed the news with great enthusiasm, 


FATE AND A FOUL 


149 


avowing their incomparable slabman a Triton among min- 
nows. Enthusiasm had the whip hand of judgment be- 
cause their idol had made the thing seem commonplace, 
to be viewed almost as a lark. 

Up until the seventh inning the fourth game of the 
series was purely a pitchers’ battle, Sayers, for- the 
Orioles, holding the Blue Sox down to three singles and 
fanning eight men, while Manley held his opponents to 
two hits and struck out seven men. 

In the eighth inning the Blue Sox annexed one run 
through clean hitting, and then subsided. Came the 
catastrophical ninth. With the Blue Sox one run to the 
good and two men out, Manley shot a fast one up to the 
batter, and then, possessed by a demon of sovereign dis- 
dain, raised a flushed and smiling face to the upper pavil- 
ion box, from which Kathryn McCaulley was viewing the 
game. 

The batter caught the ball on the nose, slapping it 
with irreverent emphasis through the pitcher’s box. Be- 
fore Manely could move a muscle the sphere smote him on 
the side of the head and corkscrewed into the first base- 
man’s hands as the latter leaped on the bag to take a 
throw. Manley dropped to earth like a felled ox, but the 
Blue Sox led in the world’s series by three games to one, 
and needed but one more victory to become the mon- 
archs of baseball. 

It was not until 8 o’clock that evening that the dis- 
tinguished physicians summoned to the McCaulley home 
brought the stalwart pitcher back to life, only to confess 
their inability to estimate, with any approach to accuracy, 
the full extent of his injury. For when he declaimed 
Shakespeare with horrible precision of gesture and tone, 
his speech was unmeaning or unintelligible. 

“A little flighty,” said the physicians. “He’ll be 
more like himself in the morning.” 

But he was not. If anything, he was worse. His 
unreflecting face was childlike in its unperturbed sim- 


150 


RING AND DIAMOND 


plicity. He knew no one, remembered nothing. His 
mind was treading a circuit of alien thoughts. 

They brought Kathryn to his bedside, and with a 
quick-drawn breath and a sudden wild fluttering of ^ the 
heart, she saw this sunburned young giant who worshiped 
her, twist his head away, close his unreadable eyes and de- 
mand petulantly to be let alone. His desire for her had 
gone out like the flame of a blown candle. 

In the meanwhile, panic seized the Blue Sox, and 
they lost two games in succession. The next day it 
rained, and the next; so that on the fifth day after Man- 
ley’s accident the world’s series stood three and three, 
with the decisive game to be played off on the Blue Sox 
home grounds. 

Local fans were downcast. Their enthusiasm had 
fallen from them like a bright garment. The papers had 
said Manley’s mental condition called for an operation, 
and that soon. On this point journalism gave authen- 
ticity a hurried handclasp. The doctors wanted an opera- 
tion; but they did not get it. Kathryn McCaulley vetoed 
the proposition as promptly as it was put. They had told 
her that the case was peculiar, that it might be merely the 
ever-recurring “transient suspension of mental activity 
and temporary loss of memory.” 

A chance blow might awaken the sleeping faculties; 
there were many such cases on record. Some day, they 
drooled, Manley would have the pleasure of telling the 
story of their professional skill to his offspring. Then 
they took one look at Kathryn’s white set face and fled as 
from a pestilence. To the end that fate might be as kind 
as it had been cruel, Kathryn insisted that Manley be 
taken to the ball park and put into a uniform. There was 
a chance that the surroundings would bring him slowly to 
a realization of who he was and what he had been; and 
when he played about like a schoolboy with his team- 
mates, hope rose vivid and sustaining in her dauntless 
soul. 


PATE AND A FOUL 


151 


The day for the final game of the series was just 
such a one as the spectators and players would have 
ordered had samples been submitted to them. A proph- 
ecy of frost, almost as a scent, hung in the air, clean from 
the heavy showering downfalls of rains. The playing 
field was like a great carpet of soft emerald green, and 
overhead was spread a canopy of flawless turquoise blue. 

The Blue Sox grounds presented a picture filled with 
color from bleachers to grandstand, where masses of wav- 
ing pennants made the boxes and far uprising rows of 
seats a great spread of bright hues. 

The Blue Sox rooters were not without hope. Dor- 
gan was to pitch, and it was a gamble. He was one of 
the best and worst pitchers in the game. He could throw 
“stuff” no other pitcher in the big leagues could dupli- 
cate, speaking in a dual sense. For when he was going 
fine, no mound artist was his master; but when he started 
to slip, no anchor had enough weight to hold him to the 
earth. 

When the game began the great Manley^ sat hunched 
up on the players’ bench, eyes twin tokens of un- 
masked stupidity, entertaining himself with a gurgling, 
incoherent monologue. The fans had witnessed him** 
throwing and catching a ball with the ease and grace of a 
venerable and stiff-fingered lady; but they saw him with a 
film over their eyes, and applauded him as though they 
were not convinced that he was at the end of his tether. 
Of course, he did not understand; no matter what the 
crowd did, his wooden face remained fixed in its custom- 
ary impassivity. 

Dorgan twirled phenomenal ball until the ninth in- 
ning, when the Orioles fell on him like wolves in a rabbit 
drive. The score was 5 to 0 in favor of the Blue Sox 
when their pitcher went to pieces. Four runs had 
crossed the plate, there were two men out, and the bases 
were populated. 

Dorgan acted like a man who had never thrown a 
horsehide-covered sphere over a rubber pentagon. He 


152 


RING AND DIAMOND 


faced the situation with a startled consciousness of thor- 
oughly aroused apprehension. He had hoped to be taken 
out at the beginning of the slaughter, and when he saw 
that he was to be made take his medicine, his eyes 
searched Colonel McCulley’s face with the inquiring dis- 
tress of a dumb animal that is being hurt. 

Frowning heavily, he gathered himself for a mighty 
effort, though his sinking heart told him he had lost all 
control of the ball. 

The pitch was a wide one, but the batter, over- 
anxious, swung at the ball, tipping it with his bat and 
swerving it out of its course. 

Smack! The ball caromed off Manley’s drooping 
head, and the blood rushed from a long cut just above 
his ear. The bleacher crowds rushed onto the field; the 
umpire called play. 

Colonel McCaulley took one look at Manley, and over 
his face stole a look such as Moses must have worn when 
he caught his first glimpse of the Land of Promise. For 
Manley’s vague look suddenly became knowing. A mar- 
velous light dawned in his eyes, glowed and lingered. 

‘‘Where did it hit me?” he cried. “I’m all right. 
Colonel. They haven’t won, have they?” 

With one of those rapid psychic flashes that inspire 
a tortured mind, the Colonel shouted: 

“Not yet, Billy! There’s two out, three men on the 
bases, and a strike on the batter! Go in and fan him!” 

As he spoke, the Colonel yanked Dorgan out of the 
crowd and in a hoarse whisper commanded him to vanish. 

There was a look of perplexity on Manley’s face, but 
his eyes were as steady as stars. 

“Tie this head up somehow,” he said impatiently. 
“I’ll stop the fun. Colonel. Watch me !” 

And the Colonel — ^and fully 26,000 spectators — 
watched the great Manley Walk into the pitcher’s box and 
twist over the second strike on the nervous and confused 
batter. Still watching, they saw Manley expectorate in 
his glove and moisten his Angers for a spitter, and the 


FATE AND A FOUL- 


153 


batter disdainfully poise himself for it. And they saw 
Manley, grinning amiably, whisk over a fast straight ball 
that cut the heart of the plate and made the Blue Sox 
the champions of the world. 

But they did not see what Manley saw that night, 
for it lay in the depths, of a true woman’s eyes — the 
eyes of Kathryn McCaulley that was, and Mrs. William 
Ewing Manley that is. 





When Stratton 
Took the Pledge 


Tom Stratton tried a good many things before he 
discovered that he was even a mediocre base ball player. 
After leaving college he travelled many thousands of 
miles and endured a variety of hardships. He had good 
and bad points, but he was never yellow — or lazy. He 
planted cotton in Carolina, fed stock in Oklahoma, 
worked in a threshing crew in South, Dakota, and finally 
learned to play ball in Texas. And without taking the 
pledge or any particular credit for abstinence, he never 
touched a drop of intoxicating liquors. 

So when he first joiped the Pirates he was just a little 
different from the average busher. He had more nerve 
for one thing, a better education for another, and con- 
spicuous ability. But there was no one to take any inter- 
est in his development. Enthusiastic, but unnoticed, he 
was left to absorb base ball knowledge watching some 
star of the big show batting out fungo flies. Not a single 
soul tried to correct his many and manifest faults in 
batting, base running and sliding. Had he been yellow he 
would have quit. Nobody disliked him, but he was a 
busher, and his team-mates had to respect their own rank 
and importance. They had been through the same mill, 
and their refusal to recognize his existence was absolutely 
spleenless. 

_ Then the girl came. Tom Stratton never forgot the 
first day he saw her. He was chasing flies for practice 
out in right field. The sky was a beautiful riot of color, 
vivid purples, deep grays and fleecy whites; but even 


156 


RING AND DIAMOND 


these splendors of nature paled their ineffectual fires be- 
fore the radiant beauty of Clara Allen. She came out on 
the field with her brother Harry, who was manager of the 
Pirates, and in his day a prince and pedagogue of brilliant 
pitchers. 

At another time, Stratton would have been delighted 
to accept the notice his manager was giving him, but now 
he had eyes for none save the charming Clara. The vir- 
gin freshness of a May dawn was about her, anc^her dress 
consisted of some loose, simple draperies that suggested 
the mystery of the East, the sleeves defining the lovely 
lines of shoulder and arm. Her eyes were blue, sun-filled 
when she smiled, and tender and glorious always. 

“I wanted to meet you when you first joined the 
Pirates,” she announced, when her brother had per- 
formed the introduction, “but you don’t appear at the 
clubhouse with the other boys on the team.” 

To Stratton this was a delicious foretaste of heaven 
and he wanted to say something grateful and clever, but 
he was as unintelligible as a hair-lipped train caller with 
a mouthful of hot mush. 

“I am not going to take you away from your work 
now,” she assured him. “I am on my way to the club- 
house now, and I asked Harry to make me known, so that 
I could tell you that I saw you play in Texas last Sum- 
mer, and was present when you beat Fort Worth with that 
beautiful home mn drive with the bases full. I shall 
never forget that hit. It was one of the prettiest and 
healthiest four-sackers I have ever seen, and Harry can 
tell you I have been a fan since childhood and have seen 
quite a few ball games.” 

Stratton trembled with delight, but was still speech- 
less. 

“Can’t you visit me at the clubhouse this afternoon?” 
she asked, pretending not to notice his embarrassment, 
nor the smile that flickered over her brother’s good- 
natured face. 


I 

WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 157 

Stratton went red, then white, “Certainly !’' he 
gulped. Then, in a hushed, worshipful voice, he added: 
“You're awful good to me. Thank you ever so much!" 

And that was the beginning. Tom Stratton im- 
proved immensely from that day on, both as a right 
fielder and a squire of dames. Clara Allen was never 
out to him when he called, but to other members of the 
team she became as inaccessible as the grand llama of 
Tibet. Of course, they talked about it, and the busher 
came in for a certain amount of criticism. They openly 
marveled at his nerve, saying it was illegal to kill such 
fresh lads, but certainly not improper. As for ‘ Tom 
Stratton, he calmly turned the pages in the book of life 
with the daily growing conviction that no man can remain 
a bachelor wthout becoming something of a scoundrel. 
He was immovably certain that he had found a girl as 
adorable as the ideal sweetheart of youth's stainless 
dream, and he was as uncivil to his critics as a butler 
traveling incognito. 

And he played a pretty article of ball withal. So 
cleverly did he perform that Harry Allen's soul expanded 
in anticipation of the marvelous, breath-taking talents he 
was sure to disclose. He got to know the Pirates' difficult 
right field like a book, soaring all over that territory in 
the face of the sun, and pulling down the hardest drives 
of the opposition. In playing line hits against the con- 
crete wall he came to be a master, reducing the size of 
the hit by knowing where to go for the rebound. He was 
endowed with a natural talent for hitting, and his extra- 
base slugging distracted^ the enemy and won him a large 
and enthusiastic following. Even Morgan Sheldrake, the 
aristocratic owner of the Pirates, corisented to know him, 
greeting him cheerfully, but with a careful cordiality that 
was perceptibly, yel indefinably, different from tl^t which 
he would have bestowed upon one of acknowledged social 
poiSition. 

It is within bounds to say that Stratton^s phenomenal 
playing, and the resultant increase in the box office re- 


158 


RING AND DIAMOND 


ceipts, was mainly the reason for Morgan Sheldrake^s re- 
appearance at the Pirates’ Park, as a spectator. Coming 
every Saturday afternoon to see his hired men perform, 
Sheldrake could not but see and seek the beautiful Clara 
Allen, as ardent a fan as ever rooted against a visiting 
ball team. 

“You must help me brush up on the fine points of 
the game. Miss Allen,” he told her. “I have been so tre- 
mendously busy with other and larger interests that I 
have neglected the Pirates shamefully. And in neglecting 
them I have forgotten quite a bit of inside stuff about the 
game!” 

“And I have just been learning more than I ever 
knew was in the game,” rejoined Clara Allen. “It is hot 
generally known, but that busher, as they used to call Mr. 
Stratton, knows more inside stuff than anyone in the 
game, except my brother ; and I honestly think that Harry 
regards Tom Stratton as the wisest man in base ball 
today.” 

“Your brother possesses enough base ball brains to 
suit me,” upheld Sheldrake. “I am nol even contemplat- 
ing a change of managers, no matter how far down the 
Pirates finish. Harry is sober, efficient, and reliable, and 
he suits me in every particular. I am going to see that 
he is made vice-president of the White-Hibb oners. He 
was elected to membership at our last meeting.” 

“It is so kind of you to take so much interest in 
Harry,” murmured Clara gratefully. “He is a good 
brother, a fine citizen, and the best manager in the world. 
But now that he has joined your blue-blooded total ab- 
stainers I am going to ask him about that sign out in--left 
field there. See the one I mean — that sign of the Superb 
Brewing Company, which offers a million glasses of beer 
to the players knocking a ball through the open mouth of 
the tipsy goat in the foreground.” She nodded toward 
the brilliant advertisement on the field fence and ^as 
Sheldrake looked he frowned. 


WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 


159 


afraid that will have to stay there the balance 
of this season,” he growled. “The Superb Brewing Com- 
pany has a contract for one year. However, I shall coun- 
teract the effect of it, if it will please you. Wait until 
the team goes away again and I can put some men to work 
on that fence.” 

“Plaese don’t trouble on my account, Mr. Sheldrake.” 

“On your account, and on my own,” voted Sheldrake. 
“As a member of the White Ribboners it is my duty to 
combat the drink evil, and it is notoriously patent drunk- 
enness is increasing. By Jove! I’ll attend to this at 
once. Tomorrow morning I shall have an extra force of 
painters at work. We shall see what we shall see!” 

The following afternoon there was a new and con- 
spicuous sign in left field that read: 

“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and who- 
soever is deceived thereby is not wise.” 

As he hung over Clara Allen and noted her smiles 
upon realizing the temperance retort he had caused to be 
placed upon the left field fence, a wave of joy swept over 
Morgan Sheldrake. She turned a glorious smile upon 
him, and let her gloved hand rest approvingly on ihs arm. 

“That was sweet of you — and clever!” she breathed. 

Sheldrake had never seen an angejj but from that 
moment of his life all his angels wore primrose dresses 
and had golden hair and blue eyes, just as this girl had. 
He hooked a thumb in the armhole of his waistcoat and 
beamed and glowed. 

The spectators enjoyed the contradictory signs and 
enjoyed themselves suggesting others of similar character; 
but they howled with unadulterated joy when Tom Strat- 
ton lugged his bat to the plate in the seventh inning and 
poked the first ball pitched through the orifice in the 
goat’s mouth on the beer sign for a home run. It was a 
titanic swipe, as unexpected as it was unpremeditated, 
and at the end of the game a representative of the Superb 
Brewing Company handed Stratton a written order on any 


160 


RING AND DIAMOND 


and all of its breweries, to be honored on presentation 
for a glass of beer, the limit being one million glasses. 

“That beats the home run you made in Texas!” cried 
Clara Allen, as Stratton pushed his way to her box to show 
he^he order for a million glasses of beer. 

' “Wish I could sell them at the market price.” laughed 
Stratton. “Guess I’d better have this thing framed, 
though, for I have to drink them myself.” 

“Give me that order, Stratton!” It was Sheldrake 
who spoke in a tone of command to the tall, sinewy athlete 
at his side, and it was no wonder the latter released a 
smile as he faced the slender, floppishly dressed base ball 
magnate. 

“May I ask what you intend to do with it?” Strain 
ton’s voice was soft, his eyes mild and his face almost 
vacant in its absence of definite expression, yet somehow 
he gave off an expression of latent power, of capacity for 
swift, ruthless action, were he by any possibility con- 
strained to act. 

Sheldrake was crimson to his collar edge. 

“Yes, you may ask,” he said, in a husky, shaking 
voice. “I am going to return it to the old scoundrel who 
runs that brewery! If you want beer. I’ll buy you all you 
can drink!” 

Stratton’s good right first popped against his employ- 
er’s jaw with a report like the opening of a champagne 
bottle. Sheldrake, with an inarticulate cry, plunged for- 
ward on his face and lay quite still. 


“Oh, Tom, what have you done?” wailed Clara, stoop- 
ing swiftly over the unconscious form of Sheldrake. 


“Let him alone!” grated Stratton. “I’ll take you 
home as soon as I dress. He’ll be all right in a minute 
or two.” 


“Someone get a doctor!” ordered the girl, straighten- 
ing up. There was an expression of surprised disgust on 
her face as she turned to Stratton. “You brute!” she 
accused. “You had no right to hit him, and you’ll never 
take me home again — ^never!” 


WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 


161 


In the hotel that evening Harry Allen told Stratton 
that Clara had denounced his action in unforgiving 
terms of fury, hut that Sheldrake, who was quite all 
right again, merely remarked that class, education and 
early environment were bound to tell. 

“Clara, says she will not receive you if you call,” 
added the manager. “She says there is nothing you can 
conceive that could have goaded you to such uncontrol- 
able wrath. In other words, she thinks you proved your- 
self an ignorant and barbarous clown. Of course, I can 
only look on in amazed disapproval, but Clara really 
thinks you behaved unforgivably. Fortunately, Sheldrake 
wants the matter dropped at once and seems more sorry 
than censorious. Confidentially, Tom, I think he has an 
idea that you committed an unprovoked assaujt through 
jealousy.” 

“I didn't though,” said Stratton with a reckless laugh. 
“I got mad because he tried to take my million glasses of 
beer away from me. And I need 'em all, Hairy. I need 
'em all!” 

For the succeeding week Tom Stratton was a figure 
of sinister and horrific mien. He announced that accord- 
ing to his own figures it would take him 208 years, drink- 
ing 12 glasses daily, Sundays included, to collect the entire 
gift from the Superb Brewing Company. But he had re- 
solved to drink that million glasses of beer during his 
own little span of life. 

A local paper came out the next day with a story to 
the effect that Tom Stratton had put away 82 of his mil- 
lion free beers the night before. 

Stratton hunted up the reporter who wrote the story 
and told him without acrimony that he had lied. 

“You said we drank a whole lot, and that I drank 
82 beers. That's a lie. I drank 119 beers last night, and 
tonight I hope to beat that record all to smithereens.” 

When the Pirates went to Cinnapolis for a series of 
five games Stratton could not find a Superb Brewery to 
honor his order for beer and broke loose with a vengeance. 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Responsive always to any claims of friendship, he deliv- 
ered himself •without reserve to the lure of good company 
and palatable entertainment. Whatever diversity of 
opinion existed in Cinnapolis regarding his playing abil- 
ity, there was a perfect unanimity of sentiment concern- 
ing his capacity for strong drink, namely, that it was un- 
limited. 

Stratton got into the game following his first carouse , 
in the enemy’s country, and although his legs felt hope- 
lessly inadequate he did not play a bad game. The con- 
test was unusually close and exciting, and the score was 
1-1 in the tenth inning when Stratton strode to the 
plate. Usually a right-handed batter the star right field- 
er leered at the pitcher and took his place to hit left- 
handed. 

The pitcher could not conceal his astonishment. 
Stratton violated the expectoration order and wiped his 
mouth with the back of his hand. The next instant he 
slammed away at a low one, and the ball whistled out to 
deep center out of everybody’s reach. 

The Pirates were all on their feet, watching the 
mad flight of the ball toward the fence and dancing with 
glee over their prospective 2-1 victory when a -^eat 
shout from the bleachers directed their attention to the 
diamond. 

There was Tom Strattoq;i running around the bases 
the wrong way! Batting left-handed had confused him 
and he had mechanically started in the direction he was 
facing. By the time they got him wheeled around a 
fielder had retrieved the ball and thrown it in. The pros- 
pective home run never materialized, and the enemy took 
away the game in the eleventh inning on a base on balls 
and a hit to right field that Stratton fielded with the agil- 
ity of a rheumatic old lady in a hobble skirt. 

“This feat of stupidity,” screeched the Cinnapolis 
Courier, “was achieved by the great Stratton, whose one 
.and only ambition is the ultimate consumption of one 
million glasses of beer. The big-headed star toys with 
the cup that cheers, shows his incapacity to think in criti- 


WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 


cal moments, and continues to haul down a handsome 
salary. Any other member of the Pirates who attempted 
his fool stunts would be benched in a jilfy. We have it 
on good authority that Manager Allen’s hands are tied in 
this matter, and that for some inscrutable reason Mor- 
gan Sheldrake would like to see Tom Stratton consume 
his million glasses of beer, and then some. Sheldrake 
has more than one iron in the fire and next season, during 
the time the Pirates are on the road. Sheldrake Park will 
be given over to a hippodrome consisting of the finest 
American and European acts. Perhaps this is the reason 
Sheldrake has no interest in his Pirates* As for Tom 
Stratton, the only way for him to escape criticism is to 
go oif somewhere and die. No one speaks ill of the dead.” 

The fans at home stuck to Stratton, however. He 
was their idol, and they had much the same feeling for 
him that Jean Richter expressed about Goethe: “We are 
not to sit in judgment on that sacred head.” 

For the remainder of the season, Strattton, so far 
from reforming, gave free rein to a Sahara-like thirst, and 
the Pirates constituted themselves, each one separately 
and upon his own initiative, into a sort of dry nurse 
society to protect him from himself. And the roasts in 
the newspapers seemed only to give him a measure of that 
wild enthusiasm which a running railway train usually in- 
spires in a bench-legged canine. 

About a week after the -regular season ended Harry 
Allen handed Stratton a note from his sister. It was a 
golden burst of sunshine after gray skies and fogs and 
storms. It was very brief, but it froze Tom to rigid, 
breathless attention. It read: 

“I must see you at once, as I have a proposition to 
make to you which concerns myself as well as it does 
you. — Clara.” 

Stratton didn’j: lose a second getting to the Allen 
home, and when he was ushered into the girl’s presence 
he congratulated himself that he was at last at pleasant 
handgrips with destiny. Fell a silence like that of a crypt, 
which was broken by Clara. 


164 


RING AND DIAMOND 


" “Certain out-of-town papers,” she began, “have hint- 
ed all season that Mr. Sheldrake permitted you to break 
training because he knew I abhorred drunkenness, and 
was anxious that I should be'come thoroughly disgusted 
with you. I paid no attention to these ridiculous conjec- 
tures till my brother voiced similar suspicions, and then 
I went straight to Mr. Sheldrake, who told me that he re- 
frained from discipling you because the public Vould take 
any drastic action on his part as being prompted by re- 
vengeful motives. To show his sincerity he gave me an 
application for membership in the exclusive temperance 
club of this city, the White Ribboners. It is in the form 
of a pledge to abstain from all intoxicating beverages, 
and Mr. Sheldrake and my^brother have signed it as your 
sponsors. Tom,” she ended abruptly, “won’t you sign it 
for my sake?” 

“For my own sake as well, dear,” he told her. “I 
never drank to excess before in my life. But you 
seemed to prefer Sheldrake, and like every fool who 
thinks he can spite others by spoiling his own health and 
prospects, I tried to drink everything I could get my 
hands on. Not because I like it, but because I thought, 
crazily, that such a course would give pain to one whose 
freedom from the slightest ache or sorrow I would pur- 
chase with my life.” 

“I am going to trust you, Tom.” 

“You can, Clara, but I am going to say frankly that 
I don’t ike the idea of signing this pledge. I have enough 
will power to quit anything without calling on others to 
witness my renunciation. In addition, the White Ribbon 
affair is very select, and I don’t like to think I am being 
tolerated as a member for the sake of someone else.” 

A shadow fell athwart the girl’s mobile face and her 
lips dropped into pensive lines. 

“The pledge holds good for a year only. Won’t you 
sign it and let me give it to Harry to turn in at the next 
meeting?” 

“If you insist!” he laughed. “I’ve mixed wtih the 
elite and the all right, the low-brows and the high-brows, 


WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 


165 


the soused and the unsoused, and I ^ess the White 
Ribboners can’t hurt me!” 

Where Tom Stratton spent the following Winter 
was an unclued mystery; but it was generally believed 
that he had gone hunting with Harry Allen in the Maine 
woods. He refused to drink anything intoxicating on the 
Spring training trip and told everybody that he was on the 
water wagon for the balance of his life. Sporting writers 
received the news of his reformation with scornful incred- 
ulity, despite corroborative testimony of his team mates 
and his own splendid physical condition but when Manager 
Allen made him field captain just before the team started 
for home the act proved annihilative of all lingering 
doubts 

When the Pirates opened the season at home it was 
apparent that a wonderful change for the better had 
been wrought. There was nothing more inspiring than 
the way the old guard helped the recruits and supported 
and sustained their new captain. 

Base ball critics agreed that the Pirates had the best 
team in^ their career. The infield was a stone wall, the 
outfield fast and heavy-hitting, and the pitching staff one 
of the strongest in the league. Every man worked with all 
his brain and eight fingers and two thumbs. It was tre- 
mendously diverting to witness the despised and lowly 
Pirates crush visiting teams that formerly trounced them 
with ease; and there was no^slackening of popular inter- 
est in these slaughters. 

August found the elate and triumphant Pirates 
snugly esconced in second place right on the heels of the 
Cinnapolis Browns, who were leading the league by a very 
narrow margin. Stratton’s men took the series from the 
Titans, four straight-from the Reds, and swept into the 
homestretch tied with the Browns. 

The Pirateville fans felt as if there was not room 
enough in the earth, nor the waters under it, to contain 
their happiness and exaltation. As all paths led to Rome 
for Caesar’s soldiery, all avenues of conversation led to 


V 


166 


RING AND DIAMOND 


the Pirates’ magnificent work, and their chances for win- 
ning the pennant. 

The Pirates’ winning streak continued into the 
middle of September, and they repulsed their opponents 
with impregnable calm. They showed no signs of ner- 
vous strain, and arrived in Cinnapolis just two games 
behind the Browns, and with a three-game series to play 
that would decide the pennant race. 

Until they lost the first game of the series the 
Brown’s demeanor denoted that they felt they were doing 
the rest of the world a favor by breathing the air that 
was in general circulation. The rapacious Pirates, play- 
ing with greater dash and cunning, took the wind out of 
their sails by defeating them most decisively in the second 
game. 

The fans in Pirateville, waiting for the result of that 
game in watchful tension before the public scoreboards, 
went stark mad when the news of the victory was flashed 
over the wires. The jam of cheering throngs in the city’s 
streets that night was so close that a man could j^ot have 
fallen except straight in his tracks. One could niove only 
as the surge of the press carried him. 

The canyons formed by the great office buildings 
were thundering back the echoes of the shouts of joy- 
maddened thousands when the newspapers posted a bulle- 
tin that pinnacled their felicity and added a capstone to 
the Browns’ arch of misfortune. In flaming red charac- 
ters these bulletins said: 

“Hetter’s Field, the home of the Cinnapolis Browns, 
was totally destroyed by fire today one hour after the 
second game of the series was over. As the third game 
is the one that was postponed in Pirateville at the begin- 
ning of the season. Captain Stratton insists that it must 
now be played on the Pirates’ home grounds.” 

Next morning both teams returned to Pirateville, the 
Browns raging inwardly and smiling outwardly. They 
not only expected another reverse ; they were creepily cer- 
tain of it. The Pirate? cavorted about in blissful relief. 


WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 


167 


Like the illustrious John Paul Jones they had just begun 
to fight. 

Tom Stratton’s face had an expression of pleased 
contentment; a slow, placid, huge sort of contentment tha 
softened the grim lines of determination about his moutht 

“We’ll win the pennant today!” he assured Harry 
Allen. 

“I know it,” said that worthy quietly, without eager- 
ness, as one deposits a fact which will sink in of its own 
weight. “But one thing bothers me. Sheldrake hasn’t 
filled in the ditch where the trained seals are, and the one 
out where the 'diving horse performs because he is going to 
give a free show for the fans tonight.” 

“Where’s the ditch?” 

“In the right field, near the wall, between the foul 
line and the bleachers.” 

“That’s out of the way,” Stratton relieved him. 
“Don’t worry about it. It won’t bother us any.” 

The crowd that turned out to witness the deciding 
game of the great pennant race had more tongues than 
Hydra, more eyes than Argus, more hands than Briaerus. 
It early exhibited an irresistable inclination to cheer every 
body and everything, and seemed '^cutely conscious that 
the whole affair was of m*ore than customary importance 
and brilliancy. 

It was a windy day with a gray-blue sky in which 
the white clouds raced, drawing barges of shadows over 
the earth below. An early frost had splashed the green- 
sward with patches of melancholic brown, but the wood- 
land that surrounded Sheldrake Park was aflame with 
colors that mimicked the rainbow. 

In the face of an audience of such quality and nu- 
merical proportions as filled the grounds, both teams rair 
out on the diamond resolved to do their gorgeous best. 
The gong rang for the beginning of the game; the babel 
of talk sank to a hum, broken from time to time by a 
roar of laughter at some witty references to a diamond 
celebrity. 


168 


RING AND DIAMOND 


The Pirates drew first blood in the third inning, and 
it was Stratton who wielded the knife and set the home 
rooters on the verge of lunacy. With two men out he 
doubled to center. Clancy, his dependable second base- 
man, followed with a single to right. Stratton was off at 
the crack of the bat and reached third when Hoffman, the 
right fielder, fielded the ball and made a lazy relay to 
second base. As he rounded third Tom saw that the ball 
had not quite reached the second baseman, and realizing 
that the latter would have to turn and make a good throw 
to the plate to retire him he put on every ounce of steam 
and sped for home. He figured the play correctly. 
Knowing that the Pirate captain was an exceptionally 
fast man the second baseman made a hurried throw to the 
plate, but it was high and wide and Stratton scored with 
a dazzling fadeaway slide. Compared to the terrific out- 
burst cf cheering that greeted this play a boiler factory 
was a thin and inaudible echo. 

The Pirates stopped at one run, but it seemed in- 
effably' large and sufficient till, in the sixth inning, one of 
the Browns cracked a resplendent liner down the right- 
field foul line. Stratton had kept the batsman in view at 
an angle not directly facing the sun, and this enabled 
him to see the ball as it starte'd from the bat. He had 
an intuitive perception that it would cut close to the foul 
line and he was off like a flash. Running at top speed, he 
saw the ball would pass over his head into fair territory, 
made a wonderful but ineffectual leap for it, and plunged 
across the foul line. 

The water-filled trench was before him, the loose 
stones near the brink scattering from under his spikes. 
His realization of the fall which was inevitable was swift 
as a lightning flash, and yet the thing itself seemed to 
arrive with horrible deliberation. As the water closed 
over his head, a babble of cries rose faintly, gaining vol- 
ume because of a slowly dawning consciousness among 
the fans that victory was impossible without their captain. 

The batsman circled the bases for a home run, the 
ball being permitted to roll unheeded to the furthermost 


WHEN STRATTON TOOK THE PLEDGE 


limits of the grounds by the frightened Pirates, who clus- 
tered about the trench with ghastly faces. A widening 
circle of crimson came to the surface with Tom Stratton’s 
bruised and bleeding bead. Harry Allen had removed 
the trained seals, but not the rocks. Eager hands yanked 
Tom from the water, but as he essayed to stand up his 
knees sagged and he lurched forward with a groan. 

Harry Allen, panting from his sprint across the field, 
dropped on one knee and produced a whiskey flask. 

“Take some of this, Tom!” he gasped. 

Tom’s eyes opened wearily, rested for an instant 
upon the flask, then impaled Allen with a reproachful look. 

“I’m done with that forever, Harry!” he gasped 

The wound on his head was dressed with adhesive 
plaster by the club physician, and while the stands and 
bleachers simmered with excitement like so many super- 
heated tea kettles, he resumed his position in right field. 

But the greedy Browns did not believe in making two 
bites of a cheery, and ere the flustered Pirates could pull 
themselves together they put another run across the plate 
on a base on balls, an error, and a solid, untainted hit. 

The Pirates came to bat in the ninth inning with the 
score 2-1 against them, and did some mighty clubbing, 
making a double, a single and a triple in swift succes- 
sion, while the roaring populace stood up and acclaimed 
them seraphin and cherubim. Their performance was 
the maximum of hitting efficiency. When they took the 
field the necromancy they had practiced with their bats 
had transformed the score to 3-2 in their favor. 

The Pirates’ pitcher, with a look of unutterable 
boredom, struck out the first two men to face him. When 
the next man singled the fans thought the slab artist 
was erring on the side of mercy, but when this was fol- 
lowed by a savage double to center, they began to look 
worried. 

At this juncture a pinch hitter inserted his personal- 
ity into the game, and before the crowd had a chance to 
scan his features they saw the ball sailing high over first 
base, just inside the foul line. 


170 RING AND DIAMOND 

The yell of delight that' welled up at the sight of 
Stratton flashing across the grass to intercept the ball 
changed to a hoarse shout of warning when it was seen 
that the sphere was descending abreast of the oblong 
ditch. Stratton, his eyes glued on the falling ball, was 
going like the wind, and if he heard the shout he did not 
heed. The fans had a very huge respect for his talents as 
a ball player, but they acted as if they couldn’t imagine 
how any man in his proper senses, if given free choice, 
could dive for a second time into a ditch of water studded 
with rocks so that it might serve as a private parlor for 
sea lions. Even though they thought he h^d more speed 
than sense, it' was with considerable elation that they saw 
him race to the edge of the trench, shoot high in the air, 
squeeze the ball in his gloved hand, and disappear with a 
tremendous splash. 

Both runners had crossed the plate and defeat was 
their certain portion, but they cheered extravagantly when 
their idol crawled out of the ditch unassisted and ran 
staggeringly toward the home plate, uttering unintelligible 
cries. 

The umpire walked out to meet Stratton, talked for 
a moment', took the ball from him, examined it carefully, 
then faced the crowd and held up his hand. 

Sometimes, in the very mi^st of an inferno of tumult 
and uproar, there seems to supervene a single moment of 
stillness so strongly intense that the very universe seems 
to pause. It was in just such an instant that the umpire 
spoke : 

“I am obliged to declare the last batter out,” hi 
shouted, “and award the game — and with it' the champion- 
ship — to the Pirates. Captain Stratton has convinced me 
that he did not drop the ball by showing me the ball is 
wet only on one side, whereas if he had dropped it the 
ball would be wet all over.” 

The events of the next few moments will always be 
little more than a cinematograph dream to Tom Stratton. 
The next thing he remembered clearly was Sheldrake, 
Harry Allen and Clara surrounding him in the president’s 


WHEN STRATTpN TOOK THE PLEDGE 171 

office under the grandstand. Through the clamor of his 
mental upheaval he heard Clara speak. 

“Oh, I’m so happy!” she was saying. “If I could 
only be sure that he would never drink again; but I fear 
Tor him. The accursed drink is so strong a temptation 
and he did not want to sign the pledge at first, and now 
that he is free he might start again. If he would only 
sign another pledge for a longer period!” 

“No pledgd kept him straight!” spoke up the voice 
^ of Harry Allen. “Hb has all the will power any man 
wants! How about it, Mr. Sheldrake?” 

“He certainly has!” he heard Sheldrake say. 

“But he was a White Ribboner and he is too honor- 
able to break a solemn pledge!” cried the voice of Clara 
Allen. 

“There was no solemn pledge to break,” came in the 
tones of Harry Allen. “His application for membership 
was rejected, and he was so notified. I believe his family 
is in the liquor business, and I know that he left home and 
shifted for himself rather than sell booze.” 

“Then why did he want to assault me for trying to 
take his booze order away from him?” cried Morgan 
Sheldrake. 

“Because,” Tom enlightened him, sitting up with a 
quizzical smile, “you called my father an old Scoundrel. 
He is president of the 'Superb Brewing Company!” 

Clara threw her arms around him and, blushing viv- 
idly, cried: 

“A million kisses for your next home run !” 

“Taken!” he laughed. “But you must pay in ad- 
vance!” 

• Those who saw the wedding and part of the 
honeymoon are firmly of the opinion that that is just what 
Mrs. Stratton did. 


/ 





The Last Hunch 
of Bobby Sowers 


Bobby Sowers was noted for his hunches, and the 
members of the Buccanners would take oath that he never 
had a bad one. Let' him presage a miracle and they would 
bet their last cent on its arrival. Of course, being base 
ball players, they were more Superstitious than sailors, 
but they knew by long experience that Bobby’s hunches 
anticipated events with uncanny accuracy. 

The Buccaneers, as a team, were the near approach of 
that impossible figure of speech — a chain without a weak 
link. They had finished first in their own league three 
straight seasons and won the world’s series twice, so it 
was not to be wondered at that more than a couple of 
their nifty number strutted about like supermen, and 
acted as if the push button that cont'rblled the universe 
was immediately under their several and spatulate thumbs. 
In fine, they had such a high opinion of themselves that 
when they were good they were very, very good, and when 
they were bad they had hard luck. 

Bobby Sowers did not hold his place in the Bucan- 
eers’ outfield on the strength of his hunches. Although 
a veteran of 41, he was one of the greatest outfielders the 
game had ever known. No player used better judgment 
in playing for hitters, for he was a past master in the art 
of posting himself for individual batters and besides know- 
ing their weaknesses he always considered who was pitch- 
ing and just what he was serving to the man at the plate. 

There may have been better right fielders in the 
world than Bobby, but they were either driving ice 


174 


RING AND DIAMOND 


wagons, traveling for a suit and cloak house,- or com- 
pounding prescriptions; certainly, they were hot in base 
ball. Dan Henderson, manager of the ^ccaneers, admit- 
ted this much, and in his day Daniel was a very cute right 
gardener himself. Before he shed his spangles and seized 
the managerial reins, he had been the hero of hupdreds 
of phenomenal catches in major league outfields, and for 
many seasons ran Bobby a close second, a feat that 
claimed all his faculties of mind and strength of body. 

Probably the greatest hunch, and certainly the most 
impressive, that Bobby ever had saved Dan Henderson’s 
life. The Buccaneers were playing the world’s series with 
the Brown Stockings at the time, and Dan had decided to 
go home ahead of the team on a fast express. With his 
ticket bought and his grip packed, for he was all ready for 
the journey when Bobby, who had been napping in his 
room after supper, charged up to him and entreated him 
not to go. , 

“This is not a pleasure trip. Bob,” laughed Hender- 
osn. “I’ve simply got to get home ahead of the team. 
It’s business of the most pressing kind.” 

“Dan, I won’t sleep a wink tonight if you take that 
train!” declared Bobby Sowers. 

“Are you so anxious about my safety as all that?” 

“It’s a hunch T got Danny!” cried Bobby. “Don’t 

go!” 

Henderson laughed again, but Bobby called to his 
teammates that his hunch was being disregarded, and that 
he wanted them to help him forcibly restrain their mana- 
ger if that were necessary. The Buccaneers responded 
to his call like fire horses to a three-alarm fire. 

“You play Bobby’s hunch. Commodore!” they com- 
manded in unison; and he did. He swore a round oath 
of goodly circumference, but he trembled like an aspen 
the following morning when he read the papers. The fast 
express had been wrecked, and the only survivor had to 
have both legs amputated. 

“After this,” remarked ‘Bullet Bill’ Squires, “the 
Commodore will pay more attention to things he can’t un- 


THE LAST HUNCH OF BOBBY SOWERS 


175 


_derstand. There’s only two things Bobby can’t make the 
future yield up— the location of a gold mine for himself 
and the date when my old soupbone is going to fail me.” 

“He’d make a million telling fortunes,” remarked 
second baseman Jack Sanders, “only he can’t bring on his 
hunches whenever he likes. If he ever gets a hunch on a 
horse race, I’ll sell my farm to back the goat he picks. 
Fortune telling got a black eye when he took up base 
ball!” 

“Well,” drawled catcher Dick Manning, “I’ve been 
watching him play ball for ten years, and I know several 
things he can’t do. He’s the weakest player in the ma- 
jors tagging baserunners, he can’t stretch a base on balls 
into a three-bagger, and nobody ever saw him steal second 
with the bases full.” 

“Outside of that,” grinned Squires, “Bobby almost 
knows the game df base ball, don’t he? There’s no 
youngster in the ^me going as fast this year, and our vet- 
eran isn’t a Spring chicken any more. I’ll bet he can’t 
forget the day that he stood in his front yard when a lad 
and watched General Scott’s troops march toward 
Mexico.” 

“That’s a wheez6 that Dan Henderson would like to 
hear,” rejoined Dick Manning. “He’s praying that every, 
year will be Bobby’s last. He was always a little jealous 
of the old boy, you know, and I wouldn’t be a bit sur- 
prised if he let him out the minute he started t’o slow up. 
And Bobby knows more base ball in a minute than the 
Commodore could learn in a lifetime, take it from me.” 

“I’d have never known my poor old mother was so sick 
but for one of Bobby’s hunches,” said Jack Sanders. 
“We all know he wanted Squires here to keep out of the 
game the. day Bill broke his ankle going into second. 
The Commodore won’t laugh so much at his hunches any 
more, I’m thinking.” 

“Five years ago,” related Dick Manning, “before 
either of you boys were with us, the Buccaneers struck a 
losing streak and tumbled from second to sixth place. 
One rainy afternoon a bunch of us were visiting League 


176 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Island in Philadelphia. As we boarded a Thirteenth 
Street car for uptown we noticed for the first time that 
there were exactly 13 in the party. The number of the 
car was 1313, and before we reached our hotel we butted 
through a funeral procession containing 13 carriages. 
You fellows can magine how the bunch felt after that, 
but Bobby bobbed up serenely. ‘Somehow,’ he says, ‘I 
got a hunch that this bunch of thirteetis is going to work 
backwards for us. I feel as if it means a change for the 
better.’ We even doubted the old boy’s sanity, and some 
of us thought he was faking a hunch to cheer us up. But 
we went right at it the next day and never stopped until 
we had piled up 13 straight victories.” 

The Buccaneers, according to Dan Henderson, were 
not going to experience any difficulty winning their fourth 
straight' pennant, but the other clubs in the league decided 
to open the season, anyway. Dan Henderson’s orders 
were positive and made no provision for failure- “We 
want the pennant and another world’s championship,” 
he told his men, and while they had a small and waning 
confidence in the man, they set to work with an energy 
that made their previous toiling seem a species of languor. 

There seemed to be only one other team in the league 
worthy of their mettle, and that was their old rivals, the 
Browns. And the latter put up a grea'f battle all the way 
from the drop of the flag. They had a young manager 
and a young prince of pitchers. Price Montgomery was 
the manager, and he had almost incredible sagacity; 
Harry Davenport was the pitcher. Craft and control, 
added to blinding speed, made him the monarch of the 
league’s moundsmen. 

Manager Montgomery became the talk of the base 
ball world, and was regarded as the only man likely to 
wrest Dan Henderson’s laurels from him. A man of 
voluble outbursts and Indian silences, the youthful Mont- 
gomery never upbraided his players for a mistake. He 
had the faculty of being mentally alert' at the most criti- 
cal moments, and many times won a game because he in- 
tuitively grasped a situation, saw a weakness of the oppo- 


THE LAST HUNCH OF BOBBY SOWERS 


177 


'f - 
r . 

sition and drove tow^d that weakness with all the 
strength of his forces. He saw plays with uncanny judge- 
ment, and had the never-isay-die spirit that makes leaders. 
Before the season was far advanced he proved his ability 
to blend two dozen players of questionable skill into a 
winning combination. 

Young Davenport was twice pitted against Bullet 
Bill Squires, and twice he triumphed over the champions’ 
premier pitcher. Mr. Davenport mowed, down the Buc- 
caneers in heaps. Nine of them struck out, in the first 
game, 12 fanned the breeze in the second contest, and 
, young Mr. Montgomery, of the Browns, smilingly claimed 
that some of the champs were still striking at the last ball 
when the next one came over. When the Browns, toward 
the end of July, romped into second place, the haughty 
champions regarded them with chill disapproval. It 
crossed their minds as a possibility that these presumptous 
fellows might keep them out of the world’s series and the 
handsome check that attends participation in that classic 
event. 

Then things began to happen. Bobby Sowers began 
to play a game, that while every bit as good as the aver- 
age fielder, was incontestably poor of him. He showed 
unmistakable signs of slowing up and lost' a deal of his old 
speed and dash. His legs no longer enabled him to>make 
plays that used to be soft for him. His hitting fell off, 
and though he was still good, he thought it was time for 
him to give somebody else a chance. So like the plucky 
little man he was, he went straight to Dan Henderson. 

“Dan,” said he, “I don’t have to tell you that I’m 
about through. You’ve got a likely young fellow in this 
Stewart who has been understudying me, and I’ll drill him 
for you. Give him to me mornings and I’ll tutor him to 
1 ' take my place. He’s a natural hitter and I can teach him 
' a little about playing the old right garden. I’il hang 
( on till the end of the season and try to make myself use- 
' ful. Then I’ll retire. I’ve got a little money saved and 
. I always said I’d never go back to the minors.” 

r 


178 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Dan Henderson smiled in a bored, superior way. 

“Bobby, I’m afraid you will go back to the minors,” 
he said. “I don’t think much of this Stewart, and for a 
while I’ve been dickering for Kent, of the Ro9«monts, who 
is one of the best right fielders ever developed in the 
minors. Although the Rosemont manager tells me he is 
not fond of getting a living witness of the fall of Sumter, 

I think I’ve put one over on him at that. In short, I’ve 
arranged a trade whereby I get Kent and Rosemont gets 
you, with some cold cash to boot.” 

Bobby shook as if lightning had struck him. He 
could feel the room rocking. He braced himself with a 
supreme effort. 

“I must go to Rosemont — is that it, Dan?” he man- 
aged in a thin voice. 

“That’s about it, Bobby,” said Henderson, in a voice 
of oil and velvet. “You realize that there can be no 
friendships in base ball — ^that I must do what I am doing 
for the good of the team. There’s no personal feeling in 
the matter — none whatever. The boys want to get into 
the world’s series, and the way you have been pla 3 dng — ” 

“I know — I know. But, Dan, I thought I could earn 
another world’s series check even if I didn’t get in the 
game.” 

“Sorry, but Rosemont wanted you, and I wanted this 
Kent.” 

When Bobby broke the news to Manning, Sanders, 
Squires and the rest there was a furious outburst of 
angry amazement. One and all, they declared the Com- 
modore’s action villainously inhuman. But' though they 
fluently condemned their manager’s step as an unforgiv- 
able act of calculated malice, they could not but think 
that it was for their interests in the long run. 

Bobby was a fine little fellow, true enough, and his' 
hunches were something to marvel at; but there was the 
world’s series check that' came to them with the supre- 
macy of their league, and they could not fail to see that 


the last hunch op bobby sowers 


179 


the retention of their old right fielder might mean a neat 
pecuniary loss. 

They were sorry that Bobby had to go to the minors, 
but it was something that was in store for them when 
their best days were behind them; it was the knell of 
doom for all ball players, and when it came their turn 
they would have to swallow the same bitter dose. Good 
luck to Bobby! And here were those pesky Browns right 
on their heels, striving to snatch a fat check from their 
fingers. That the new right fielder might prove a sensa- 
tion and help them to victory and the spoils thereof! 

Bobby Sowers had another interview with Henderson. 

“Dan,” he said, “I am willing to go to another major 
league team, and I want to know if you can’t place me.” 

“I’m not going to try,” snapped Henderson. 

“Well, I’m not going to play with Rosemont.” 

“Then you won’t play anywhere !” roared Henderson. 
“Kent is on his way here and if you don’t report, why 
I’ll have to put up all cash. I guess the Rosemont man- 
ager would rather have the cash anyhow.” 

“That’s what he’ll have to take, Daniel. I will not 
play in the minors!” 

A base ball player from a bush league is not made a 
miracle worker by being transferred to a team holding the 
world’s championship title any more than a lawyer is 
made an archangel when he is put on the bench. Kent 
came, he was seen, and he was found wanting. 

Not that he was a poor player; he was, in fact, a 
little above the average in every department of the game. 
But the Buccaneers had been led to expect a marvel, and’ 
the disappointment they suffered was indescribably un- 
nerving. That, and the sudden frenzied streak of the 
Browns, who crowded them out of first place at the close 
of August, and started a neck-and-neck race that lasted 
all through September. 

Bobby Sowers and his troubles disappeared from the 
Buccaneers’ thoughts. The Brown had them on the run, 
and they were beginning to see with terrifying clearness 


180 


RING AND DIAMOND 


that unless they braced in time they would not enter the 
world’s series. 

Bobby dropped around a few times when they were 
making their last home stand, but even among those who 
had professed to be his greatest admirers he discovered 
^himself as welcome as a coffin at a wooden wedding. 

“Bobby, why don’t you get a hunch that these 
Browns are going to lose out?” asked Dick Manning. 
“Are you sore at the lot of us for what Henderson did?” 

“No,” said Bobby, slowly, “but I understand the lot 
of you are sore on me for choosing such a bad time to go 
back — ^just as if I could stave off the end if J had a mind 
to. Henderson ought to play Stewart, I think.” 

“It’s too late for that now. There’s only two games 
left to play, and the Browns must win both.” 

That afternoon the Browns won again, and the way 
lay before them like a victor’s course. They were field- 
ing like bandits, batting like fiends, and were as sure of 
their irresistible drive as a Paganini of the compelling 
charm of his violin. 

As for the Buccanners, they were shedding their 
hopes as Autumn trees shed their leaves; and with their 
hopes went confidence. Bobby came around to* talk to 
them. He appeared optimistic, and entreated them not 
to be cast down. It was his happy creed that in the very 
face of failure itself one may, as often as not, discern the 
inspiriting features of final and complete success. 

Henderson heard him talking to the men of his team 
and could not but give him credit. ^ 

“Encourage them all you can, Bobby,” said Hender- 
son. “What that? Sure you can hand them a hunch. 
They believe more in your hunches than they do in Holy 
Writ. It’s a fine idea, too, Bobby. I’m glad you thought 
of it.” 

He laughed, loudly and mirthlessly, and bent a keen 
look upon Bobby’s grave countenance. But there was 
nothing to be read there, and he felt that helpless sort of 


THE LAST HUNCH OF BOBBY SOWERS 


181 


annoyance which is engendered by regarding an absolute- 
ly imperturbable face. 

“Don’t try to get square by telling them you’ve got 
a hunch they will lose out tomorrow!” Henderson 
shrilled all of a sudden. “If that’s your little game, it’s 
18 and 5 for yours and the wind’s with you!” 

Bobby grew mildly bellicose. 

“Daniel,” he said, “I ought to pull your nose for your 
unjust suspicions. But instead I’ll give you my word that 
I’ll tell every man of the Buccaneers that I have a hunch 
that they will win in the last game tomorrow. You know 
my word is good, and I don’t mind telling you that I keep 
my word.” 

The next day the Buccaneers went into battle with 
the confident Browns full of vague disquiet, but still to- 
tally unprepared for what was to come. Harry Daven- 
port pitched for the Browns, and in returning them the 
league champions he annihilated all his records. 

Not a hit or a run or a base on balls was permitted 
by the speedy Brown twirler. Only 27 batters faced him, 
and he was accorded .errorless support. He fanned 19 
batters, and only 13 of the balls he pitched were hit by 
Buccaneer batters. Eight of these were fair, but not one 
was even close to being safe. ^ 

Every Buccaneer went to the bat wearing the expres- 
sion of an early Christian martyr, and their lady-like 
swings at the ball provoked continuous and contemptuous 
slaughter. A more miserable and ludicrous exhibition of 
impotent batting was never seen on a base ball diamond. 

The Browns won the game with effortless ea^ by a 
score of 3-0, and captured the penhant without the sem- 
blance of a fight. The Bucanneers were reviled by their 
disgusted supporters in language heartfelt and profane, 
and hastened to the clubhouse with averted faces. They 
were annoyedly aware that they had given an exhibition 
unworthy of a nine of schoolboys. 

Dan Henderson’s forehead creased in stark perplex- 


ity. 


182 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“That Davenport pitched a perfect game, all right, 
he admitted to the newspaper men. “But there’s a nig- 
ger in the woodpile somewhere. I wish I knew what 
caused that farce.” 

His wish would have been gratified that very evening 
could he have heard Price Montgomery, manager of the 
Brown Stockings, laugh at an explanation Bobby Sowers 
volunteered. 

“I certainly told every regular on Henderson’s team 
that I had a hunch they would win the game,” Bobby 
chuckled, “but I added privately, for each man’s ear alone, 
that I had a hunch that he was going to be killed by a 
pitched ball. Then I told Harry Davenport to slam the 
first ball at the head of every man that faced him. They 
were frightened to death, Mr. Montgomery. Thanks for 
this check. It’s a little bigger than my world’s series bit 
for last year!” 


cA Scrap of Paper* 


Bill Kirby spat disgustedly into the pocket of his big 

mitt. 

“Say, Jim,’’ he implored, “don’t go falling for a skirt 
and smear molasses all over the parade.” 

Big Jim Clinton threw the complaining catcher a 
slow curve, and then took time to laugh. ^ 

“Don’t worry. Bill! Can’t' I ask for an introduction 
to the girl without being accused of spoiling the proces- 
sion?” 

Kirby speared a swift outshoot with his gloved hand, 
plucked the ball out again, and jammed it into his hip 
pocket. 

“If you must, why you must!” he growled. “Come 
on and get presented to the queen! Gee,” he muttered 
to himself, “you’d think I never seen ’em fall for the 
skirts to hear him talk. And her as plump as a vineyard ~ 
quail and blonde as wheat!” 

“Who’s good enough to eat?” Clinton demanded, 
catching the last word of his battery mate’s soliloquy as 
he fell in step and marched across* the diamond in the 
direction of the grand stand. “Upon my soul, Bill, I be- 
lieve you’re hard hit yourself. .So you think Miss Allison 
is good enough to eat, do you? Why, you old cannibal, 
let me tell you something that ” 

“I don’t want to hear it!” barked Kirby. If you go 
falling for any skirt at this stage of the game you’re go- 
ing to ruin your base ball career as sure as pussy is a cat. 
I’ve nursed you along so far, Jim, and I’m going to keep 
right on the job. There won’t be any female manager in 


184 


RING AND DIAMOND 


ours if I can avoid it. Speak out! I’d rather hear you 
say it than feel you thinking it.” 

“You’re sick,” pronounced Jim Clinton with a broad 
smile. “As your family physician and friend, I prescribe 
rest and absolute cessation of mental effort.” 

Kirby’s mouth wrenched a smile. 

“I’m not too sick to kick,” he argued. “If you let 
this girl hypnotize you, Jim, you are going to discover 
that I can kick more with one tongue that a mule can 
with four feet. Girls are all right in their place, but they 
don’t belong around a young fellow who is just making 
his way in base ball. That’s the real goods, or I don’t 
know the difference between a bath sponge and a sponge 
bath. I like Miss Allison, and I think she likes me, but 
she is^too pretty. You’ll fall like all the rest of ’em.” 

“All the rest of them? Are there so many as 

that?”. 

“Why not?” demanded the catcher with som.e heat. 
“Take it from me, that girl has had dozens of them catch- 
ing their breath on the instalment plan. What’s more she 
is the daughter of the owner of this team, and a lot of 
guys thought they could bag beauty and promotion just 
because she treated ’em like white men. What came of 
it? They got the big laugh, every mother’s son. It’s 
coming to you, Jim, if you lose your head. Get me?” 

But Jim Clinton, his sun-tanned face suddenly 
draining white, had stopped and was grinning like one 
afflicted with senile dementia at a vision in white lawn 
that had apparently risen out of the ground in front of 
him. Bill Kirby put it afterwards, the big pitcher was 
as collected as loose hay in a storm-swept meadow. 

“Mr. Kirby,” said Miss Grace Allison, “I don’t be- 
lieve I have ever met your friend and co-worker, though 
in common with the rest of the universe I know him by 
sight and admire him for his truly wonderful prowess as 
a pitcher.” 

“We were just coming over so I could introduce Jim, 
Miss Grace,” said Kirby with blunt directness. “This is 


A SCRAP OP PAPER 


1S5 


Jim Clinton, Miss Allison, one of the best pitchers in the 
country today, and the greatest if he don’t lose his head, 
as I was telling 'him when we pretty near run over you. 
We were busy talking, you see, and I was rubbing it in on 
Jim. Don’t mind if he’s a little out of sorts. He’s as 
touchy as a gas mantle.” 

Big Jim was still mentally incompetent'. He was 
conscious as one is conscious in a dream delirum during 
which one can neither move nor speak. The beauty of 
the girl had paralyzed him, and there was nothing that 
human agency could do in the way of rescue. 

There she stood, a faultless beauty of lithe, high- 
colored type, with skin like milk and abundant hair of 
golden hue. She looked just what she was — spontaneous, 
frank, wilful, good and sweet, with a smile that came 
like a sudden dawn. 

“I’m afraid Mr. Clinton has been taking too much 
morning practice,” she laughed with a note of keen relish 
in her mirth. “He looks — er — well, rather tired and ” 

“Idiotic!” supplied Kirby with deep, untainted joy. 
“It’s harder than stabling a giraffe in a dog house to get 
Jim accustomed to the society of ladies. He’s a regular 
woman-hater. Miss Allison.” 

Jim Clinton returned to earth with savage eyes for 
Kirby and fervent denials for Miss Allison. 

“Bill is pleased to describe himself now,” he assured 
her. “He is never slavishly addicted to truth-telling. 
The fact of the matter is, I have been forced to deny my- 
self feminine society in deference to his whims. Com- 
ing over from the bull pen he was telling me ” ' 

“What any other sensible person will tell you,” 
Kirby put in. “That you got to keep youir mind on the 
game and eat, sleep and live base ball, or you will never 
get anywhere.” 

“And I am sure that advice is perfectly all right!” 
•cried Grace Allison. ‘“Just follow it, Mr. Clinton, and 
there’s not the slightest doubt but that you will carve 
your name deep in the granite of time. Perhaps, too, it 


RING AND DIAMOND 


would be very much better if girls were among your chief 
aversions.” 

“But they are not !” 

Jim Clinton’s rejoinder was instant, positive, and 
not unanticipated. “I assure you. Miss Allison, I take 
a rampant delight in feminine society, and it is only 
since Bill here has been coaching me along to become, as 
he puts it, the greatest of them all, that I have foregone 
the pleasures that are to be found in ” 

“There goes the gong for skull practice in the club- 
house!” interrupted the imperturbable Kirby, affecting an 
air of concern he nowise felt. “You’ll have to excuse me, 
Miss Allison, because we’re due now for one of them 
chalk and blackboard lessons your pop has introduced.” 

As might be surmised, Jim Clinton was not enor- 
mously interested in the morning base ball lesson that fol- 
lowed, but he was able to hide the real state of his feel- 
ing and register respectful attention. He could hardly 
wait until he got Kirby alone; but when he did it was the 
irrepressible Bill who got in the first word. 

“I know what you’re going to say,” the grinning 
catcher anticipated him. “I want to save your breath for 
you. Consider it all said, and then get this: If you were 
not what I — yes, me — have made you, both Colonel Alli- 
son and his pretty daughter would have as much use for 
you as an Eskimo has for silk hosiery. There is no man 
in the game today that I consider in your class for con- 
stant physical efficiency. You are always fit because you 
live by the clock. You are always in bed by an early 
hour and you know what to eat and hOw to eat it. You 
don’t know what any form of dissipation is, and as a re- 
sult you’ve got them all bidding for you. Your contract 
expires at the end of this season. But what does Colonel 
Allison offer you to renew it? A paltry $4600 and I 
know you can get at least twice that much. Now, I don’t 
say he sends along his daughter for any special purpose,, 
but why does she pick out a mutt like me to talk to? 
Because I’m your pal, if you want me to tell you.” 


A SCRAP OP PAPER 


187 


“Bill, I don’t want you to talk like that. It doesn’t 
sound right. I don’t like it.” 

“Well, there’s things that I don’t like either.” Kir- 
by’s honest brown eyes were snapping. “For instance, 
the Colonel says I’m your valet, and that the only reason 
he carries me is because you insist that I catch you. My 
knowledge of the batters of this league is something he 
don’t' consider at all. The only thing he is thinking of is 
my age and the fact that I am slowing up and can’t pickle 
the old pill like I used to.” 

“You’re good enough for me, Bill,” said Jim Clinton 
warmly. 

“Thanks, old pal, but I know I’m going back at that. 
I’m only looking out for your end, that’s all. Now, I 
don’t want you to get mad, but if a girl gets you on the 
hip just about now you are going to go all to pieces. Be- 
sides, the foxy Colonel and pretty Grace, in my humble 
opinion, have something framed up for you. Unless I 
miss my guess, Grace is being usecLto get you to sign with 
the Allison outfit for another three-year period at no ad- 
vance in salary. Just sit tight, say nothing, and I think 
you’ll find I’m all right.” 

While Jim Clinton believed his old friend profoundly 
in error, he said nothing. He owed much of his 
proficiency to the veteran Kirby, and was glad and ready 
to admit that it was through Bill he retained his footing 
in the big league when first he emerged from the bushes. 
On the other hand. Colonel Allison had been kind t'o him, 
and had voluntarily raised his salary to its present propor- 
tions. Not that he didn’t deserve it. 

Jim Clinton’s was a nature that responded, without 
objection and without hesitation, to every call. He was 
ready to take his place upon the slab in the ninth inning, 
without' warming up, with three men on the bases, nobody 
out and a pinch hitter at the bat; and always, uncom- 
plainingly, cheerfully and modestly, gave of his best, not 
for his own record, or the crowd’s applause, but for the 
M elfare of his club. 


188 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Expert opinion was not' wanting that Jim Clinton was 
sadly overworked. It was claimed, also, that he used too 
many curve balls to last long in the majorleagues;that ere 
long he would begin to feel every curve ball taking a little 
more strength out of his arm. A marvelous performer, 
said the sharps, but he would soon slip back, because of 
the burdens he was made to shoulder, because of his side- 
arm delivery, and because of the unusually large number 
of curve balls he used. 

Jim’s uncanny control of his curve probably account- 
ed for his most frequent use of it. When in a hold with 
the batter, instead of using a fast ball, generally the 
easiest to control, he always used the curve. Even when 
the count was three and two the curve came up instead of 
the fast one, and though some batters knew this they 
could not hit him, so great was the shoot and so perfect 
the control. 

On the day following his introduction to Grace Alli- 
son it rained continuously. Jim ran across the magnate’s 
daughter in the lobby of his hotel, persuaded her to share 
two theatre tickets he claimed to have with him, covered 
up the fib by a judicious use of the telephone, and rather 
regretfully left Bill Kirby to his own devices. Bill said 
only one word, but that word was profane. 

Matters had progressed to such a point that a month 
before the close of the regular season Jim was a steady 
and cordially welcomed visitor at the Allison home. 
Strolling with Grace in the garden became his favorite 
pastime. 

There were shrubs and trees and pools and fountains 
and winding paths through beds of flowers, with hedges 
built like green walls, and long avenues suggestive of the 
streets of some fanciful city of dreams. In this environ- 
ment, Jim first read in wide blue eyes a permission to 
touch cherry-red lips. And for the next three days he 
moved about' in a half dream, accompanied by the unalter- 
able conviction that he was the happiest and luckiest man 
alive. 


A SCRAP OF PAPER 


When he tried to tell Bill Kirby something of the 
state of his feelings, the catcher would not give him ear 
and bis annoyed expression can only be interpreted by the 
chaste dash. Bill rumbled recklessly of love-struck im- 
beciles who would be better off at the bottom of a large 
body of water; of lions that were always bothered with 
gnats and moon-maddened swains who did themselves un- 
reckonable harm. And Jim did not seek in any manner to 
minimize his guilt or attenuate his responsibility. 

One late September evening, just after Jim had felt 
the rose-pressure of a soft mouth, Grace Allison led him 
into the library of her handsome home and placed a pen 
in his hand. 

“Jim, she said sweetly, perching herself on the arm 
of the chair she had thrust him into, “I want you to sign 
this without reading it. It will be an awful big help to 
an old girl friend of mine. Her father lost all his money 
and she is embarking in business for hersefl.” 

“Certainly, my dear.” 

Jim laid aside the pen. “Anjrthing else?” 

“Your reward!” She kissed him. “This is a testi- 
monial for a new candy fudge my friend is putting on 
the market. Your teammates will laugh at you when it 
is published. You don't mind, do you?” 

“Kiss me again, Grace, and I’ll laugh with them !” 

When Jim went down for breakfast next morning, 
Bill Kirby faced him with an admixture of fear and scorn 
in his eyes. 

“How did she pull it off?” he demanded, truculently. 

Jim elevated his eyebrows in surprise. 

“What’s wrong, William?” he asked amusedly. 

Bill thrust his hands, in a gesture of anger and dis- ' 
trust, deep info his coat pockets. 

“What’s wrong?” he repeated. “Ain’t you seen the 
papers yet? 1 told you they would get you, didn't I? 
Oh, don’t look so innocent. This morning’s paper says 
that you’ve signed another three-year contract with 
Colonel Allison at $5000 per year. Oh, you poor simp! 


190 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Here’s a letter I got from the manager of the Cubs offer- 
ing you $13,500 and me $4500 a year for five years!” 

“But, I haven’t signed. Bill !” 

“Get out -with you! Don’t try to kid me, Jim. Here 
it is in the paper, coming right from the Colonel himself. 
How did she pull it off?” 

Jim drew a deep breath. Across his brain flashed 
Grace’s words of last night: “Your teammates will laugh 
at you when it is published!” He grew scarlet to his 
temples. Was it a testimonial he signed? He had not 
put a pen to any other paper, and she had asked him to 
sign without reading. He had bared his soul to her, and 
she had given her heart to him. Was she false? 

A picture of Jim Clinton taken at that moment 
would have made a splendid supplement to the famous 
Book of Martyrs. He felt the strength running out of 
his body as water escapes from a broken vessel. 

“How did she pull it off?” reiterated Bill Kirby. 

“Shut up!” roared Jim; but his friend’s persistent 
query was a spur on rowelled flesh, and he dashed madly 
to the nearest telephone. 

It seemed like an age before he heard the liquid 
notes of that divine voice. 

“Is this you, Jim?” 

“Yes; this is Jim.” Despite himself his tone was 
one of dignified inquiry. “I have just read the morning 
papers. I didn’t think anything like that of you, Grace. 
No wonder you asked me to sign without reading!” 

There was quite a long pause. His heart beat fast, 
with actual pain in every throb. 

“I think I understand,” came Grace Allison’s voice 
at last. “I wish to thank you for your confident love and 
the high opinion of my honesty it must have inspired. I 
too, have just read teh morning papers. Of course, 
I tricked you into signing a contract to play for 
my father’s Blue Stockings. Wasn’t is clever of 
me? There is just one mistake in the newspaper account. 


s 


A SCRAP OP PAPER 


191 


It' says my father si^ed you. Well, he had nothing to 
do with it. I roped you in — poor little me!” 

Jim dropped the receiver, faltered to a chair, and 
sat down heavily. Bill Kirby found him, head in hands, 
an hour later, and took him to his room. 

To the stupefaction of the base ball world and the 
angry amazement of Bill Kirby, Jim Clinton was the first 
man to report for Spring training the following season. 
Only Kirby knew the inside facts of the case; the public 
had made up its mind that Jim Clinton had been tricked 
into selling his services for a song and was going to be a 
hold-out. 

“Clinton,” said Colonel Allison. “I want to tell you 
now that I have no contract with you. That report in the 
papers was a dream. I told the man who wrote it that I 
expected to sign you, as I did, but I intended to offer you 
a much larger salary — $15,000 to be exact. My daugh- 
ter says she signed you to a contract calling for a third 
of that sum. Is that the truth?” 

“That is the truth sir,” was Clinton’s prompt reply. 
“I signed a contract at her request, and I mean to work 
for whatever figure she named.” 

“The whole affair seems to be between you two,” 
said the Colonel with a puzzled headshake. “I am only 
telling you the truth when I say I have no contract with 
you. The matter rest's with you and Grace.” 

Jim, as usual, pitched the opening game for the Blue 
Stockings. Slipping and staggering along for three 
innings, he pitched nothing like the Clinton of old. His 
delivery was slugged to all comers of the ball yard, and 
he asked to be removed from the scene of carnage at the 
end of the seventh inning. 

One of the experts who had predicted a premature 
retirement because of his curve ball pitching reviewed 
Jim’s initial effort in this fashion : 

“Jim Clinton, once the pitching premier of the 
league, tried to twirl for the Blue Stockings in the open- 
ing game of the season. He remained in the box for 


u 

192 RING AND DIAMOND 

seven innings and could not keep the game even reason- 
ably close. It was clearly shown that the famous arm 
had lost its strength. The wonderful brain that made 
Clinton renowned is still cunning, but the speed is gone 
and the dazzling, sharp-breaking curve is now a round- 
house affair with little to it. Clinton’s brain 'was work- 
ing all the time and he outguessed the enemy in a re- . 
markable manner for a time, considering that he did not 
have as much speed as the average school-boy hurler. To 
those who remember the blinding speed Big Jim possessed 
only last year yesterday’s exhibition was indeed pitiful!” 

Bill Kirby read this and sniffed with disdain. He 
took occasion to remark that there was ar much difference 
between a high-powered racing car and low-geared ox- 
cart. According to his explanation, Jim had a bad cold 
in his arm and had said nothing of it, being a glittering 
example ‘of how a man may underestimate his ability by 
an habitual process of self-depreciation. 

Clinton pitched his second game against the hard- 
hitting Bisons. Or, more properly, he started to pitch. 
The vei:y fii*st ball he heaved plate-ward plopped up 
against the left-field fence for three bases, and his next 
curve was hooked just as it broke and sent sailing over 
the fence for a home run. Jim quit' the mound with a 
dejected air and the belief ran firm in sporting circles 
that he had shot his bolt. 

Bill Kirby wore an air of deep gloom in their room 
that evening. “Jim,” he said, “maybe there is something 
wrong with your whip after all.” 

“I’m trying to convince all hands,” was the gay re- 
sponse. 

Kirby looked up quickly but of shrewd eyes in which 
there was a glint of suspicion. Then he rose with an 
abruptness that sent his chair spinning to the floor. 

“You’ve been throwing the games!” he chortled. 
“Well, you old fox, you fooled me along with the rest — 
you sure did. I thought you were going back to the 


A SCRAP OF PAPER 


193 


bushes with a foot ball rush. And you looked so sad and 
mad about it, too!’* 

“Yes? Well, if I looked like a hymn of hate, I didn’t 
feel it. I always took my bath with a whistle in the 
morning; and sometimes I have even hummed a little 
song.” 

Came a sharp knock on the door, and when Kirby 
flung it open a bellboy handed in a message for Mr. Clin- 
ton. Jim took it and read: 

“James Clinton, Hotel Imperial. I witnessed your 
farce comedy this afternoon and release you from your 
contract. My father is willing to pay you as much as 
anyone, but I hope you will play elsewhere. I hate a 
quitter as strongly as I detest lack of faith. — Grace 
Allison.” 

The big pitcher grabbed his hat, and yelling, “See 
you later!” to the astonished Kirby, flung himself out of 
the room. 

Just twenty minutes later he stood facing Grace Alli- 
son in the library of her home, his face wearing a look 
of distress that was wholly sincere. 

“I am not a quitter, Grace !” he taxed her, with a 
fierce intake of his breath. “My pitching for the Blue 
Stockings has been every bit as honest as the method you 
adopted to get my signature to that contract!” 

The girl’s head went up with a proud toss. 

“You lacked faith in me!” she accused. 

“But you confessed what you had done the instant I 
called you on the telephone. You threw away my love 
for a'* mercenary reason. It was a case of contracts, and 
you discarded the marriage contract for the money con- 
tract. You confessed it, Grace!” 

She leaned toward him with flashing eyes; her hands 
gripped the edge of the table till the knuckles were white. 

“You were quick t'o distrust me — ^to think me guilty 
of gross deception,” she panted, “and I didn’t want to 
change the sudden, if ungenerous, opinion you had 


194 


RING AND DIAMOND 


formed. As for the contract I duped you into signing, 
here it is. Read it!” 

Big Jim Clinton^s cheeks burned red with shame as 
he read : 

“My sole dissipation after pitching the Blue Stock- 
ings to victory is to eat some of Ethel Connolly’s de- 
licious chocolate fudge, sold at all drug stores and confec- 
tionary stores at fifty cents the pound box, or sent post- 
paid upon receipt of price. It satisfies my sweet tooth as 
nothing else in the candy line did or can, and I am pleased 
to recommend il to anyone looking for a pure and perfect- 
ly delicious sweetmeat. 

(Signed) James H. Clinton.” 

Jim permitted the testimonial to flutter to the table. 
He took a step forward, and stopped. His eyes were on 
the floor, and he spoke in muffled tones: “Do you forgive 
me, Grace? I love you with all my heart, little girl!” 

A second later Grace Allison was smiling up at his 
conscious-stricken face from the covert of his strong 
arms. “Can I hate you for loving me, Jim?” she wanted 
to know. 


The Superman of the Slab 


I have discovered the world’s greatest pitcher!” 
cried Martin Chew, his voice ringing with enthusiasm. 
“Kent, we’ve got the pennant cinched if we sign this mar- 
vel up for the rest of his natural life!” 

Cyrus Kent lighted a cigar and sent several globular 
puffs, like toy balloons, ceilingward. 

“At different times, Martin,” he said slowly, “cer- 
tain graceless bush league managers have told me that 
selling you world-beaters was too much like selling a 
chunk of lead disguised in gold leaf and taking in ex- 
change its weight in minted coin. I can’t forget your 
last pitching phenom. You filled the metropolitan press 
with hysterical panegyrics as to his vasty virtues, and 
what happened? The tail-end Tigers got to him for 19 
runs in six innings. My memory assures me that you also 
dubbed him the world’s greatest.” 

“Kent, if you say the word I’ll leave you and the 
Beavers flat!” Martin Chew growled. But he only took 
one step toward the door and then paused. “If I knew 
you were any judge of players, or that you couldn’t be 
imposed upon by a lot of hayseed managers, I’d tell you 
to get another scout to comb the bushes for your miser- 
able old ball team. Who found the stars that shine in 
your club this very day? Modesty bids me pause for 
reply.” 

“I’ll give it,” chuckled Kent. “You have found me 
some wonderful ball players and I’m sure I’ve shown you 
my gratitude, but you have also shown that when you like 
a youngster you can lie about his abilities with a perfec- 
tion of finish that is the envy of the ambitious and the 


196 


RING AND DIAMOND 


despair of the clever. Now, I don’t mean to say that 
your pick-ups, even the flivvers, didn’t bring folks to the 
box office; you have sprung everything on me and the 
public from escaped convicts to penniless earls who 
learned the game at college. Every yokel you took a 
fancy to who had nothing but a prayer and his uniform 
was a missing duke, a desperate outlaw, or a Charley Ross. 
That’s all well and good, Marfin, and it draws the ducats 
to the gate, but this year the Beavers want a pitcher — a 
real, honest-to-goodness ball tosser, not a curiosity with a' 
biography from your fertile intellect.. Now, frankly, 
what have you found?” 

“The world’s greatest pitcher!” Chew stoutly main- 
tained. 

“Rats!” said Kent, .with sententious derision. 
“Where did you pick him up?” 

“In a circus!” 

“Holy mackerel!” 

“Cheer up!” Martin clapped Kent affectionately on 
the back. “This fellow is the goods and when j^ou see 
him perform you will say so, too. Lester Pilkington is 
his name, and unless I don’t know cheese from chalk he 
will prove an insoluble enigma to the best batters in any 
big league on earth. Found him on a lot, blanking a 
semi-professional nine that was playing the circus hands 
in a jerkwater town up the State. Kent, you have never 
seen anything like this boy in all your born days. He’s 
got a corkscrew ball that’s unlike anything ever used in a 
big league and ” 

Cyrus Kent -silenced the old scout with a gesture. 
“Trot him out, Martin,” he said wearily, “for if I must 
listen to your advance notices I might as^ell peen at this 
marvelous moundsman.” 

Martin Chew darted from the room, his features 
reeking with happiness and when he letumed leading a 
tall, sinewy young man his face was expanded to a l^ugh. 

“Lester,” he said, warmly, “this is Mr. Kent. Mr. 
Kent, Mr. Pilkington.” 


THE SUPERMAN OF THE SLAB 


197 


Cyrus Kent was impressed with young Pilkington^s 
looks and manner if not' with his style of dress. '‘The 
world’s greatest pitcher” had glossy hair, pink cheeks and 
a profile that might have been turned out by a jeweler; 
but he was adorned with a green hat, purple tie, white 
spats and tan gloves that' looked as if they encased two 
picnic hams. He looked lonesome, and wore the inde- 
finable expression of a person left behind and forgotten. 

“I’m glad to see you, my boy,” said Kent with a 
hearty handshake and a humorous twitch of his lips. 
“Our mutual friend, Martin, has spoken very highly of 
you, and I have every faith in his judgment', I think you 
will pardon me if I ask you to accompany us to the park 
and show a touch of your quality. It is time for the 
regular morning practice, and Martin can make you 
acquainted with the boys.” 

“Kent,” said Martin Chew, with sparkling eyes, “I 
want this tryout to be private. Coleman can catch Les- 
ter; but I want you to watch the performance. And the 
boy here is a little shy. What about it?” 

“Oh, all right, Martin; just as you wish.”^ 

And the tryout given Lester Pilkington by the vet- 
eran Buck Coleman was, in fact, just as Martin wished. 
Catcher Coleman told the Beaver team all about it next 
day. He was elated to the point of being overv/helmed 
by the honor of introducing to them “the world’s greatest 
pitcher.” 

“He is the greatest hurler the game has ever seen,” 
he announced with emphasis. Extravagant praise was 
as natural to Martin Chew as it is to an opera impressario, 
but no one had ever heard Buck Coleman talk in this 
manner of the game’s biggest stars. “He’s got curves 
that twist and turn and crackle and pop and singe, and 
his corkscrew ball, as Marty Chew calls it, has the best 
spitter I ever saw faded a mile. It baffles me to hold 
him even when he gives me what I sign for, but he has 
asked that I be made his regular catcher.” 


198 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Buck mentioned this latter fact during the day in 
different intonations that ran the gamut of human emo- 
tion, from minor awe to major pride, and to final joy. 

“Get this, fellows,^' he predicted incessantly, “Coleman 
and Pilkington are going down into base ball history as 
the greatest battery in the history of the game. This 
bird is by long odds the best yet'. You can take it from 
me, or let your children read it years from now.” 

Pilkington pitched his first game against the Tigers. 
When he appeared in uniform he presented a somewhat 
grotesque figure. His shirt was much too small for his 
barrel-like chest, and his collar wouldn’t button by an 
inch and a half. Even the home fans gave him the laugh, 
but when he breezed home on the chin strap an easy vic- 
tor there were ten thousand cheers for every previous 
jeer. The youth’s pitching was a consummate piece of 
matchless art. He held the hard-hitting Tigers to five 
widely scattered hits, and fanned four of their best bat- 
ters in a row. 

Martin Chew started to boost his new find through 
the press. He said that Lester Pilkington liked a noble 
picture, a fine stretch of river, a caressing room, a pretty 
woman. He couldn’t use his corkscrew curve as often 
as he wished because of the inability of the catcher to 
follow its multitudinous breaks; He was a dandy in dress, 
a towering and unforgetable figure on Atlantic’s board- 
walk when the Beavers were at home; and he never ap- 
peared without gloves. The latter were especially made 
and “cost a stupendous figure.” 

Lester Pilkington won six games before the end of 
May, all without a great deal of apparent effort, and the 
critics decided, along with Cyrus Kent, that Martin 
Chew’s marvel was anything but a merry jest that fate 
had been grooming to play the role of a flash in the pan. 
Pilkington’s personality and his work were universal 
topics of conversation. 

Nat Marlow, captain and second baseman of the 
Beavers, pretended to believe* Martin’s balderdash about 


THE SUPERMAN OF THE SUAB 


199 


the new pitcher’s connection with that sublimated seg- 
ment of society known as the aristocracy. Nat always 
spoke deprecatingly of successful recruits, and he never 
credited anybody with being sincere. He always showed 
that he grasped their little game. 

‘Tilky is sort of uppish, if you notice,” he re- 
marked to his team-mates. “He never mixes with any of 
us, and he’s simple enough to wear gloves all the time. 
Jever notice that he wears specially-made gloves on the 
field, and that he slips a glove on his right hand before he 
comes to the bench when he’s pitching? Why, he goes to 
bat with gloves on, apd nobody ever saw him off the 
field without white or tan kids. He even eats with ’em 
on!” 

“Get wise. Natty, me boy,” grinned Buck Coleman, 
“It’s Marty Chew’s idea of advertising, and it’s getting 
Pilky as much publicity as his phenomenal pitching. He’s 
a good guy, Nat, and if you pick him for a mollycoddle 
you are going to get fooled.” 

“Aw, that’s what you think,” grumbled Marlow. 
“I’m betting he wears a wrist watch and sits on the floor 
when he puts on his shoes and stockings. Why, he won’t 
even double with anybody when we’re traveling.” 

“Like to sleep alone myself, old top,” chirped Cole- 
man, and promptly dismissed the subject from his 
thoughts. 

Others beside Captain Marlow had commented upon 
Pilkington’s fondness for gloves; and they were dimly 
aware that he always carried about with him a vaguely 
luminous aura of the enigmatic.. He took his pleasures 
lethargically if not sadly — and alone. 

Pilkington, in all the games he had worked, had 
shown the impassivity of a cigar-store Indian. Never- 
theless, Marlow and several others thought he lacked the 
necessary nerve. It was not until the first home game 
they played after their short trip through the West that 
they found their sensational youngster had the gameness 
necessary for him to become a great pitcher. 


200 


RING AND DIAMOND 


While pitching to Brunt, of the Quakers, one of 
Coleman’s returns struck the .dirt in front of the pitcher’s 
box and rolled to Marlow at second base. Nat affected 
not to see the ball, and when Pilkington called to him to 
throw it he hurled the ball savagely to the youngster 
with instructions to wake up and chase his own errands. 

Pilkington did not expect the ball to be thrown with 
such wicked force, and as a result it nipped him on the 
. end of the third finger of his pitching hand, making a 
nasty gash. Lester did not complain, but went on pitch- 
ing with the blood spurting from the cut. When an- 
other infielder ran over to him and asked to see the ex- 
tent of his injury he covered it with his gloved hand and 
calmly announced he would finish the inning. When he 
returned to the bench he refused all proffers of assistance, 
turned his back to his team-mates, and bound the injured 
finger with tape. 

Every ball he threw when he went back to the mound 
caused him pain, but he gritted his teeth and stuck to his 
task. He grew better as the game progressed, and he was 
rewarded with his sevePth conscutive victory. 

• Cyrus Kent called him into his office after the game 
and introduced him to his daughter, Janet, a strikingly 
beautiful girl of 19, with warm, clear skin, rebellious 
dark hair, and eyes like golden brown shadows in an, 
Autumn pool. 

‘‘Janet wanted to tell you how much she admired 
your pluck, Lester,” said the boss of the Beavers. “I 
have already told Nat Marlow that he made a vivid 
blunder in not taking you out when he saw the injury his 
temper had inflicted. He says he wants to apologize to 
you.” 

“And I wish to congratulate you, Mr. Pilkington,” 
said Janet Kent, gravely. “It was bully of you sticking 
to your work, and you wouldn’t have been to blame if the 
game had been lost.” 

“It didn’t bleed much,” said Lester huskily, “and I ' 
don’t think Nat meant to hurt me. It was all my lazi- 


THE SUPERMAN OF THE SLAB 


201 


ness in not gning after the ball. Nat didn’t think my 
finger was torn, I guess.” 

Janet had been regarding his white-gloved hands in 
some amusement, but she composed her face in time and 
said softly: *‘I’m sure he didn’t. Won’t you let me fix 
your finger? We have everything handy here.” 

Slowly the color ebbed from Lester’s face and his 
hands went behind him. 

“It’s all right as it is. Miss Kent,” he said gruffly. 
“It has been a great' deal of pleasure to meet you. Good 
afternoon.” 

Janet Kent stared at the door as he closed it behind 
him, and did not stir until she heard a low chuckle escape 
her father’s lips. 

“Not used to that kind of treatment, are you, girl?” 
he laughed. “Well, he can pull a few queer stunts in 
safety, for he’s undoubtedly the greatest pitcher in the 
wide world.” 

“And the greatest boor, dad,” countered Janet. “Why 
I made such a silly offer I can never tell you.” 

“I can,” said Kent, meaningly. “Marlow would have 
fainted from joy if he had been treated in like manner. 
Pilky must be a woman hater.” 

“I hate myself for giving him such an opening,” 
faltered Janet, with a queer laugh. 

And that the opening she had given was as big for 
him as Gold Cup Day at Ascot ever was for society Lester 
Pilkington was deeply and gloomily cognizant. He was 
gloriously satisfied that she wanted to be his friend; t'his 
thought alone would make life distinctly more endurable. 
He raged inwardly that fate had rendered its ^course of 
action imperative, however repugant. 

“Your great pitcher is rather abrupt to one,” Janet 
Kent told Nat Marlow. “I offered to bandage his hurt 
finger and he fled as if I were pestilence. He is very 
proud and exclusive and upper-classy, I have no doubt.” 

“He is due for a very lofty tumble, Miss Janet,” 
Nat assured her. “The umpires are getting wise to the 


202 


RING AND DIAMOND 


fact that his famous corkscrew twist is nothing more nor 
less than the emery ball, and that, as I don’t have to tell 
you, is strictly barred. If you ask me, our friend Pilky 
is climbing high merely to increase the distance he is 
bound to fall.” 

“Why is he getting away with the emery ball when 
all the world is wise to it?” asked Janet, who never hesi- 
tated to use slang when it adequately clothed her thoughts. 
“I should think there’s another answer, Nat. I don’t 
want to knock the kid-glove wonder, though his aspect 
toward me is as inviting as an open grave.” 

“I’m not knocking,” disclaimed Marlow. “But you 
can see for yourself there is something queer about him. 
He’s t'oo careful of his hands.” 

“But they are very valuable, Nat. Mr. Chew says 
he is going to have them insured. I heard him tell 
father that the day is near when Pilkington, the Peerless, 
will be unable to lose a game no matter how hard he 
tries.” 

“That’s Marty’s usual stunt when he digs_ up a 
rustic.” 

“Then you think Pilkington is only a flash — another 
skyrocket that is going to come to the earth with a jolt?” 

“Miss Janet,” said Marlow in earnest tones, “this 
kid-glove marvel is going to fall down so hard they’ll hear 
the echo in Berlin. The umps are wise to him and they’ll 
put a stop to the stuff he has been pulling.” 

This prophecy was fulfilled in part the next time Les- 
ter Pilkington scaled the mound. Umpire Fidler, a vet- 
eran whose species was regrettably uncommon in the big 
leagues, halted the game at unexpected periods to examine 
the ball, and then apologized to the young twirler in 
these words: 

“I was only obeying instructions, Pilkington. The 
president of the league has been receiving anonymous let- 
ters accusing you of using the emery ball, and he instruct- 
ed me to watch you today. I’ll be glad to report that 
everything is all right.” 


/ 


THE SUPERMAN OF THE SLAB 


When the newspapers printed the story Captain Mar- 
low gave out an interview in which he waxed indignant 
that his star twirler should be accused of using a delivery 
or a ball that had been placed under the ban by the 
powers that ruled organized base ball. “It seems that 
some of Pilkinton’s jealous rivals have turned to writing 
anonymous screeds/^ he to-ld the reporters. “I expect 
this sensational youngster to lose a game now and then, 
but when he has been in fast company a year and learned 
the batting weaknesses of other teams he will win nine 
out of very ten games he pitches." 

Janet Kent smiled as she read this, and as Martin 
Chew happened to be calling on her father at the time 
she asked his opinion of it. “Tell me the truth, you old 
fake," she entreated. “Nat didn’t think much of Pilky 
when he was discussing his merits with me. Now he’s 
either throwing a bluff or seen a light. Just how good 
is Master Lester, the ‘greatest pitcher in the world’?" 

“Have you noticed, kid," rejoined Martin with one 
of his dry chuckles, “that while Lester hasn’t lost a game 
to date his admiring captain predicts that come next sea- 
son he will improve so that he will be able to lose one out 
of every ten? Captain Nat expects him to go ahead with 
a rapidity that in comparison would make a mud turtle 
under full headway look like a flash of light." 

Janet laughed at this, but stopped suddenly, breath- 
ing through contracted nostrils, jerkily. 

“There’s something about Lester Pilkington I like," 
she confessed. “Nat says he’s an aspiring clod, bereft of 
taste, tact and sense of proportion. Then he poses as his 
friend, and that’s what I don’t like. Your phenom has 
been as cold as a dog’s nose to me, but he is some pitcher, 
and I know it as well as anybody in existence. You know 
I understand the game, Mr. Chew, and you know what my 
love for the sport cost me. Ever since that day Buck 
Coleman’s bat slipped out of his hands and — ^ 

“There, kiddie," interrupted Martin, patting her 
shapely head “That’s happened too long ago to recall 


204 


RING AND DIAMOND 


now, and you should never think of it if it gives you pain. 

I wouldn’t mind it in the least, and neither should you. 
Your father and I are the only ones that know. Do you 
think he’ll shout the thing from the rooftops? Candidly, 

I believe we should out of justice to Carter. Only a 
foolish little darling like yourself would refuse us permis- 
sion to do so.” 

‘‘Of course. I’m foolish, Marty. What girl of nine- 
teen isn’t? But let’s talk about Lester.” Janet half 
closed her eyes, watching her father’s old friend keenly. 

“Well, kiddie,” said Martin impressively, “I am 
about to give the word painters of the press a new name 
for Lester, and it is my honest estimate of his ability. 
I’m calling him the Superman of the Slab! Wait a min- 
ute. It sounds hyperbole, but, it isn’t. I want you to 
know, kid, that this fellow is ambidexterous. What he 
is now doing with his right hand he can do just as well 
with his left any day that he is called upon for the stunt. 
You’ve seen his corkscrew twist; it is undiluted hell to the 
heaviest hitters. It is his secret, and I think I 'am the 
only one that shares it. Naturally, I am not telling. If 
he ever wishes to spill it, that’s his privilege ; it’s not mine. 
But here is one thing I want to impress upon you, kiddie. 
If he lost his corkscrew twist tomorrow he would still be 
the greatest pitcher in the game.” 

“I should say sol” gasped Janet. “‘Where is there an- 
other who can pitch with both hands with equal effective- 
ness?” 

“Nowhere!” said Martin Chew delightedly. “And 
now let me tell you that this same great youngster is 
wildly fearful lest he lose your friendship. He wants to 
take you around a little, kiddie. He’s a good boy — 
better than Nat Marlow will be when he’s dead and gone 
to heaven. In principal, mental bias and moral temper, 
there is the difference of day and night between them. I 
know them both too well to confuse them as men of one 
mind and similar ideas. What shall I tell Lester, kiddie?” 


THE SUPERMAN OP THE SLAB 


205 


“Tell him,” she replied with a blush, “that he has no 
idea what a wealth of delightful attributes I possess under 
the charming influence of kindness and appreciation.” 

Thenceforth in the trig manner of critical expression 
that obtains in large towns, there was nothing to it. Les- 
ter Pilkington was seen with Janet wherever she appeared, 
and he went calmly on the even tenor of his way as if 
life contained naught for him to do but win games and 
woo the maid. As one who fllled the unforgiving min- 
ute “with sixty seconds^ worth of distance run” Lester 
held the flying hours wasted that were not spent in 
Janet’s society. 

It wrung Nat Marlow’s soul to take a back seat, 
though he tried to assume a look of exquisite indiffer- 
ence toward the young pitcher. He tried to make Janet 
believe that he was the dearest friend of her friend, and 
failed; albeit he had few unmanageable antipathies, and 
prided himself upon his ability to make friends. 

Janet greeted him with a politeness which, though 
slightly constrained, was quiet and non-committal. As 
for Lester, he acted as if he couldn’t realize a schemer 
could be as much interested in a man as if he were inter- 
esting. Indeed, Martin Chew hit the nail on the head 
when he said his great And was as verdant as one from 
the cityless unpeopled wilderness. And Cyrus Kent 
looked upon the growing intimacy between his daughter 
and his star with an astonishment that could not have 
been greater if it had been real. 

The splendor of a limpid, rain-washed day in June 
was darkened for Janet by an unexpected visit from Nat 
Marlow, whose face glowed with rekindled hope as he 
handed her a newspaper clipping. He stood silently by 
while she read that a reward of $1000 had been offered 
would lead to the 'arrest of a German spy whose identity 
could be established by an almost indecipherable red and 
black monogram tattooed on the palms ^of his hands. 

Janet laughed softly and allowed the newspaper cut- 
ting to flutter to the floor. “Are you thinking of going 


206 


RING AND DIAMOND 


in for detective work, Nat?” she queried pretending to 
have difficulty in making her voice a shade dignified. 

Nat Marlow’s eyes blazed fiercely. “You can’t act 
as if you think it all a joke!” he bristled. “You know as 
well as I do that Lester, has never been seen without 
gloves. He wears them when he goes to bat and ^when 
he goes to eat. Why, he wouldn’t let anyone look at his 
split finger, would he? And you told me yourself he 
barked at you when you wanted to dress his wound! 
What is there to laugh at?” 

Janet Kent’s mouth tightened and her features com- 
posed to inscrutability. 

“Not much, perhaps,” she rejoined quickly, “but I 
wouldn’t consider you an impartial judge. From the very 
beginning you belittled and derided Lester, though you 
tried to make both him and me think otherwise. Before 
his coming you were the star of the Beavers; you had the 
confidence of my father and the admiration of the base 
ball public. They looked to you for a pennant, and you 
worked hard to give them one. But when Lester ap- 
peared you saw that he would become the idol of the 
people; you saw what dim-visioned fans are only now 
glimpsing — that he is going to pitch the Beavers to a pen- 
nant!” 

“Perhaps !” 

“Positively,v I say, and if anything occurs to prevent 
it I shall blame you for it and have father ship you to a 
minor league. Nat, I thought you were too much of a 
sportsman to permit professional jealousy to stunt your 
manhood. And if Lester Pilkington is the biggest spy 
unhung he is still the greatest pitcher in the world — and 
the man I shall, God willing, call husband! I detest my 
country’s enemies, and if Lester is one of them I mean to 
find out!” 

“But you love him — and that means you will protect 
him! I came to tell you that nothing can stop me from 
turning this man over to the authorities. You know in 
your heart that the evidence is all against him !” 


THE SUPERMAN OF THE SLAB 


207 


“I know that I am his promised wife !” 

“And I know that he stole you from me!” shrieked 
Marlov/. “Warn him of his danger, if you like. He’ll 
not escape me, Janet, if he hides in hell. This is the end 
of the millionaire pitcher v/ho meant t'o run off with the 
millionaire magnate’s daughter. It is curtains for the 
world’s greatest pitcher — and the rottenest German spy 
ever measured for a coffin !” 

A second later after the front door had closed behind 
him Janet had Lester Pilkington on the phone. She told 
him, what was the truth, that she was alone and wanted 
him to lunch with her. This was unqualified rapture to 
the great pitcher and he arrived in an inconceivably short 
space of time. 

“Guess I’ll be fined for speeding,” he said as he 
kissed her, “for it’s a dead certainty that some of the cops 
I passed took my number.” 

Janet made conversation with a nervous ineptitude 
that surprised even herself as they sat down to lunch. 
Lester did not apparently notice anything unusual in her 
manner and kept up a running fire of small talk. 

All of a sudden, as if she had never noticed the fact 
before, Janet cried out in a shrill voice that was perilous- 
ly near a squeal: “Why, Lester, you’re eating with your 
gloves on!” 

“As I invariably do,” was the calm response. “Say 
Janet, this mayonnaise is immense.” 

“But I want you to take them off!” Janet' scarcely 
recognized her own voice and a fleck of red flamed sud- 
denly out upon each pale cheek. 

“My hands are too unsightly, Janet!” His face 
grew rigid and there was a strange gleam in his eyes. 
“Never mind the gloves now. I’m' used to them. They 
are much better looking than my hands.” 

“You must take them off!” she flashed in an imper- 
ious whisper. 

, “Nonsense, Janet! The gloves stay on. Come, let’s 
eat.” 


208 


* RING AND DIAMOND 


“You^re — you’re a ” Janet’s nerve faild her. 

“You’re a freak!” she finished with a rush of anger at 
her cowardice. 

Lester drew his breath between his teeth with a 
whistling sound as he jumped to his feet. 

“So Martin Chew has told you, eh?” he rasped. 

Martin Chew! Good heavens, was her father’s life- 
long friend a traitor to his country? Janet’s brain 
whirled. She pressed the palms of her hands over her 
temples in an effort for self-control. 

“You are a—” 

“You said it the first time!” he blazed. “A freak — 
yes, that’s what I am ! Good old Martin Chew found me 
doing stunts in a sideshow and brought me to your father. 
I could always pitch ball, but it was Martin who showed 
me how to make my self the marvel of base ball. Look!” 
He tore his gloves off, threw them on the floor and 
stretched forth his hands. “See the two thumbs on each 
hand? They made me Theodore Thumbs of the sideshow 
until Martin Chew realized their possibilities! ‘Two 
perfectly formed thumbs, gentlemen; step right up and 
feel them! No dead lumps of flesh, but two full-grown, 
strong and astoundingly clever thumbs! Theodore will 
now demonstrate their many varied uses in the tying of 
knots, the manipulation of knitting needles and — ’ ” 

“Please, Lester, stop !” 

“Certainly; and I’ll go, too. You can’t possibly 
marry a freak?” 

“Who’s a freak?” asked a cheery voice, and Martin 
Chew walked in upon them, his eyes twinkling; “Your 
father let me in, Janet, while he stowed his car in the 
garage. Coughed and coughed outside here, but you 
fellows were too busy scrapping to pay any attention. 
Thought I’d just amble in before there was any blood 
spilled. Who is this freak you are talking about?” 

Janet turned a bewildered smile upon him and looked 
hopelessly futile. 




THE SUPERMAN OP THE SLAB 


209 



“Marty/^ she breathed happily, “please tell Lester 
about my accident.” 

i. And while she sank into the nearest chair and Lester 
stood rigidly in the center of the room, hands behind him, 
Martin Chew related how Janet used to don bloomers and 
practice in the morning with some of the Beavers; and 
how one unlucky day when she happened to be pitching to 
Buck Coleman, the latter’s bat slipped through his per- 
spiring hands and stretched her unconscious on the 
ground with a badly fractured nose. 

“But I want you to promise, Lester Pilkington,” 

. concluded Martin Chew, as he stooped and picked the 
pitcher’s discarded gloves from the floor, “that you will 
keep away from Doctor Carter for at least two years. By 
that time you can afford to lose your surplus thumbs and 
your job!” 

“What does this me^n?” queried Lester dazedly. 

“It means,” cried Janet, springing up with shining 
eyes, “that you are no German spy, and I’d marry you if 
you had a dozen thumbs!” 

Lester caught her in his arms and showered kisses 
upon her radiant upturned face. “Who’s the erman spy?” 
he wanted to know. 

“There’s a full account of his capture in this paper,” 
put in Martin Chew hastily, but I can guess who was 
here and what that poor kiddie was thinking before you 
removed these gloves.” 

“But — ” began the puzzled superman of the slab 
when Janet drew his head down to kiss him and whisper; 

“About the nose, you must know that the bone was 
splintered, and but for the skill of Doctor Carver I would 
have been — noseless. I am something of a freak, too, 
for the very nose you ^re kissing was built from one of 
my broken ribs!” 

“It’s the prettiest nose in the world !” declared Lester 
fervently; “Doctor Carver will have to remove my sur- 
plus thumbs and make me a normal being, for as it is 
nature has given me an unfair advantage of every pitcher 
in the land; and all I want is an even break — and you!” 



- ’'j 



r 






4 



» 4 . 


<' r 


I 



' • t 



4 ^' 


% 

• 4 . 








. V -, 

>• , 





J 

( 





TALES d" 
We RING 


% 





V|* 













4 









Butch Dinker’s Knockout 


When I first took Butch Dinker under my wing, he 
had never fought anything but a disposition to encourage 
breweries, and a couple of lily-livered corner loungers. 
He was estranged from science, brains, and relatives, and 
one vote shy of infant paralysis ; but he sure reached a 
high note when it came to grit. He was so full of sand 
he had to thump his chest to clear his bronchial passages; 
and, by advice of his counsel, which was yours hastily, he 
went about urging universal peace until I could get 
“Scranton Reds” to inoculate him with the serum of the 
“manly art.” Also, I made him descend to Lilliputian 
beers, which proved a blow from which he had difficulty 
in recovering. 

Scranton Reds, rude and cultureless, was a scientific 
wonder by a viva voce vote. When he shuffied into the 
ring to exhibit his certificate of election he was an epi- 
demic of gloves. Had he studied the pons asinorum as he 
did the Queensberry game he would have given the world 
about seventy-five new solutions of the famous geometri- 
cal theorem of Pythagoras. Still, Reds could not have 
made a clever man of Butch Dinker any more than he 
could have made a trustworthy and domestica^d Fido out 
of a famished wolf. He applied himself assiduously to 
the task; but, when it came to assimilating ideas of the 
boxing game, Butch filed a voluntary petition in bank- 
ruptcy. 

“Reds,” Butch would say complacently, “if only you 
had a punch, youM be champion of the world. You ain't 
got enough strength to hit a policy game.” 


214 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I know it, you mutt,'' was Reds' rejoinder, ‘and if 
you had the brains of a boneless codfish maybe you could 
stop a punch without stickin' your map into it." 

“Hits like a pile driver," Reds told me, “but can't 
box without a blue print. If you don't want to get shot 
at sunrise, send him out against a piece of cheese his first 
time out." 

At that time it was about as hard to get a novice on 
at the Keystone Athletic Club as it is to get into Con- 
gress from Mississippi on the Republican ticket. The 
softest mark “Diamond Dan" Keenan would let me have 
was Billy Mooney, an old veteran, whose frontispiece 
had been thrust into the fire of battle so often that he 
had annexed a row of four-room houses, subject to en- 
cumbrances. Mooney was obsolete. Nevertheless, he 
made Butch look like a flag station on the great white 
road to the championship. 

Before the fight. Butch radiated gracious confidence. 
“It's back to the cotton mill for Mooney," he said. 
“Whyja pick sich an old un? I think I’ll tuck him away 
in the fourth, so as to hand the fans a chase for their 
coin." 

While Mooney was taking his dimensions in the most 
approved and workmanlike manner. Butch scowled men- 
acingly, but went right on taking his medicine. His la- 
borious winks, tossed at me over Mooney’s shoulder dur- 
ing the clinches, seemed to say that if he was really doing 
anything to be sorry for he was glad of it. 

In the last two rounds of the hippodrome, Mooney 
was merciless. Butch drifted about like an ill-manned 
vessel on an uncharted sea. He took a real, genuine, 
old-fashioned lacing, served in various styles; but, at the 
final bell, the crowd was yelling its approval of him, and 
I heard Mooney tell his chief second that “you couldn’t 
put that big stiff away with an ax.” 

Butch collared me that night as I boarded a street 
car for home. He paid the fares, and took a seat beside 
me. 


BUTCH DINKER’S KNOCKOUT 


215 


“I couldn’t get enough savageness to kill that old 
stiff tonight,” he whispered. “You go out and get me a 
youngster I can murder without feeling ashamed of my- 
self afterward. I took pity on Mooney tonight because 
he’s goin’ down and I’m cornin’ up.” 

When it came to sublime assurance, you had to stand 
before Butch with uncovered hair. To have heard him 
talk, one would have thought that is was only because he 
preferred to remain in obscurity that the famous knights 
of the padded cestus were looked upon as such. How- 
ever, I still clung to the idea that Butch, through a revo- 
lution in his methods, could be made a revelation in skill. 
But Mr. “Diamond Dan” Keenan looked with scant favor 
upon him. 

“He’s a lime, kiddo,” he said, when I went to him 
to arrange for another bout. He went on to describe my 
embryo champion as several kinds of undesirable things; 
but when I left him in the hands of some boon compan- 
ions, in the corner of a saloon. Butch was matched to 
fight Max Goldberg, a cool and crafty young Hebrew, 
who, being employed by a clothing manufacturer, knew 
more about breaking sizes in fancy mixed cheviots than 
cracking the hard nuts of the squared circle. Scranton 
Reds got on the job again. Butch did his futile best to 
absorb some of the knowledge that Reds exuded for his 
benefit; but it was no use. Butch’s stomach was still 
doing yeoman service for his brain. 

Feeling himself more than adequate to the situation. 
Butch was as eager for Goldberg as the proverbial agri- 
culturist for the dinner horn. Reds was in his corner 
that night, and he took occasion to pour out a little en- 
couragement to the fat-witted Butch, in these words: 
“Goldberg’s a false alarm, son — make a face at him and 
he’ll bust the record for the standin’ high jump.” 

Butch came out of his corner for the first round, 
looking excessively warlike. The mirage of victory hung 
before him enchantingly. He burned with eagerness to 
beat down his trim-long-waisted opponent. 


216 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Goldberg, a pink-tinted iceberg, did not seem particu- 
larly depressed by Butch’s savage glare. Moreover, he 
laughed in an inexplicably personal way as they sparred 
for an opening. He shot a straight left to Butch’s nose. 
Butch missed a right swing, and took an uppercut on the 
chin. His nose stopped another stinging jab. He smiled 
with ill-managed facetiousness. 

“Move the meetin’ adjourn!” shouted a wit in the 
gallery. 

“Make it for a quick finish. Max!” yelled a Goldberg 
admirer. 

The inefficiency of Butch was patent to all, yet no 
one was prepared for what followed. Pressing Butch 
into a neutral comer with a series of left hooks that 
found their mark unerringly, the agile Goldberg suddenly 
whipped his right to the jaw. Butch went slowly to his 
knees; there was upon him a mental torpor that presaged 
defeat. A glutton for punishment, he heaved himself to 
his feet again, and staggered into a perfect hurricane of 
short-arm jolts and uppercuts. His bloody visage was 
wreathed in a smile that made many avert their eyes. A 
solid smash on the tip of his bulldog jaw, and he went 
down for the full count. Goldberg pranced hysterically 
around the ring. 

I remained in the dressing room while Scranton Reds 
and the other boys performed the revival service for 
Butch. His first words, spoken with a grin, were ; 

“When I do that to somebody, I’ll retire.” 

Scranton Reds sneered. 

“If you stick to the game till you score a knock-out,” 
quoth he, “you’ll be fightin’ all your life.” 

“Butch,” said I, looking rebukingly at him, “if you 
want to continue in the game you’ll have to find another 
manager.” 

“That’s easier than gettin’ a job,’^ he retorted. And 
so we parted. 

For a time Butch seemed grieved at my measureless 
iniquity in passing him up, and I had to earn his forgive- 


BUTCH DINKER’S KNOCKOUT 


217 


ness by standing for a touch when he was out at the heels 
and too hungry to be captious. He didn’t get another 
manager, but he did get numberless beatings. Fighting 
ten-dollar preliminaries with varying success, he eked out 
a tedious livelihood, forever predicting the knock-out that 
never came. His private and public life being vastly di- 
verting to the patrons of Fistiana, the newspaper men 
found him good copy. A cavernous joke in pugilism, his 
admirers were legion, because he went to the rim ice of 
Hades for a friend. Everybody wanted to see him realize 
his life’s ambition and vanquish an opponent by the 
knock-out route, but he always won and lost decisions, or 
was knocked out by his adversary. 

Something like eight or nine months after he en- 
tered the ring. Butch arrested the interest of Buck Hath- 
away, of the Central Athletic Club, and the latter, in a 
moment of complete asininity, signed him to meet Max 
Goldberg again. Following his usual custom. Butch in- 
formed the sporting writers that he confidently expected 
to score a knock-out. And he did. 

They say Butch never before trained as faithfully for 
any bout. Scranton Reds, out of sheer compassion, and 
without compulsion or legal duress, shouldered the bur- 
den of training. To the stupefaction of all. Butch took 
his lessons with zeal, animation, and intelligence. So 
vehemently did he study and acquire the finer points of 
gloved warfare that Scranton Reds feared a celebral 
hemorrhage. Friends and admirers made up a purse for 
him to purchase new fighting togs and street raiment, and 
when one unfortunate sporting writing asked, “What does 
Goldberg get?” his angry brethren replied that it was not 
a question of what, but where, Goldberg was going to 
get it. 

The infinite serenity of Butch Dinker impressed all. 
He was coming back to square accounts with his old 
rival; he was going to adjust the mute on Mr. Goldberg’s 
G string. 


218 


RING AND DIAMOND 


In the meantime, the exasperated Hebrew was mak- 
ing great gashes in the atmosphere by the violence with 
which he was repressing his disposition to say something. 
Everybody was howling for Butch Dinker, but what did 
he care? He was the cleverer, and he could hit hard 
enough to throw any preliminary scrapper into gray chaos 
for ten seconds. It was all well and good for them to 
praise the other’s backbone, but had he not demonstrated’ 
that the bone in Butch’s back really occupied the entire 
area of his head? Of course he had, and he would do it 
again. 

It is interesting to speculate how much larger the 
crowd at the Central Athletic Club would have been that 
night had the fight fans known what destiny held in store. 
As is was, only the regulars were there to see, and they 
wouldn’t have missed it for a mint. 

Butch was first to crawl through the ropes. To one 
accustomed to his almost imbecile grin, the set jaws and 
bright, gleaming eyes seemed to denote superhuman in- 
telligence. When Goldberg appeared he wore a worried, 
jaded expression. He stared at his rival with uncon- 
cealed contempt. Butch yawned becomingly. After a 
disquietingly long wait, which the crowd interspersed with 
waggish remarks and catcalls, the gloves were adjusted, 
the seconds scampered out of the ring dragging the prin- 
cipals’ stools with them, and the fight was on. 

Goldberg was not the only one that eyed Butch with 
an expression of wonder and incredulity, for the latter 
wielded his padded fists in a manner to suggest the trained 
boxer, and to the spring and dash of his style was added 
an enlightened ferocity that made the Hebrew think hard. 
He had a very distinct idea that he was going to have his 
own troubles with this seemly fighting machine that ca- 
pered before him for the purpose of chastisement. 

Goldberg acknowledged to himself “that he would 
have to use every strategem he had in his shop. It was 
with a feeling of the utmost gratification that he made 
Butch miss a left lead for the face. Wading in, he plant- 


BUTCH DINKER’S KNOCKOUT 


219 


ed a left on the kidneys, and sent a right to the heart. 
Butch snapped his head back with a short left, and swung 
a right to the eye, following with a terrific left swing to 
jaw. 

Goldberg flopped on all fours, took the count of nine, 
got warily on his feet again, and backed away. 

“Go get him. Butch!” cried the crowd. 

Butch set sail for his man with both fists flying. 
Goldberg took a smash in the face that brought blood 
from nose and mouth, and went into a clinch. Butch tried 
to shake him off, but he stuck closer than cockle bur. 

Thrusting him away with his left hand. Butch drove 
his bloody right to the jaw. Goldberg reeled, but kept his 
guard up. Stem duty beckoned Butch with an inexorable 
finger. Breaking down his opponent’s guard, he dropped 
his right to his hip, stepped in close, then brought it up 
with lightning speed, the glove grazing the breasts of 
both as it shot upward. 

Godlberg’s glazing eyes were shut, but his right hand, 
resting on Butch’s neck, jerked the latter’s head forward 
in such a way that when the terrific close uppercut swept 
home it crashed into Butch’s own jaw. Goldberg, a 
ghastly grin on his face, reeled away.- As the spectators 
arose in amazed bewilderment. Butch crumpled to the 
floor. 

He had knocked out himself! 



When the 

Sandman Came Around 


It was a bitterly cold day in February when the oil- 
tanker Harrowgate sent a call by wireless from the break- 
water for a United States marshal to coine at once with a 
warrant. Although there was ice in the river and on the 
tugs, I had not been long enough on ship-news to be pro- 
voked, and when our little tug bumped up alongside the 
big freighter I was among the first to climb an icy ladder 
and scramble aboard. 

“It’s all right,” I said to a big man who blocked our 
way. “The marshal will be here in the morning. We’re 
newspaper men after the story.” 

“I’m Captain Wright,” he vouchsafed; “and there is 
some story, believe me. Come down out of the weather.” 

He waved back the wireless man who charged out of 
his little house fairly bursting with information, and con- 
ducted us to an undersized cabin and prodigious hot rum 
punches. 

“Everything is all right now,” said the captain when 
he was comfortably settled in his chair, “but we had a 
big two-fisted mutiny, and the chief officer lost his head 
and got the wireless idiot to call for help. We have a 
White Hope by the name of Mike Doyle in irons, and ho 
has mussed up the crew a bit. I think he is the most 
patriotic American I ever met, gentlemen, and at the 
same time the stormiest petrel that ever landed on this 
ship.” 

“If it’s the Mike Doyl*e I know, captain,” said I, “you 
have caged the future midldeweight champion of ' the 


222 


RING AND DIAMOND 


world. He left for Europe about a year ago because he 
couldn’t get any one to meet him. The present champion, 
Dan Burly, is a joke alongside Mike. He won the cham- 
pionship only two months ago from Tom Welsh, who re- 
fused to meet Mike for the title. Burly says he defeated 
Mike in Cuba, but nobody believes it. If they did fight, 
it’s more than likely that the bout wasn’t on the level. 
Mike has been known to fake fights, you know.” 

“Well,” said Captain Wright heartily, “I can truly 
say that Mike hasn’t been faking any of the fights he has 
been in on the Harrowgate. The whole trouble with him 
seems to be that he cannot abide any one who is not an 
American. He says one American can lick six men of 
any other nation under the sun ! And he’s always ready 
to prove it!” 

“He was always a great rough-house man,” I said, 
“and when he took to the ring they had a hard time to 
keep him within polite limits, for he seemed to think 
QueenSbury rules were framed only for mollycoodles. 
He was born up in Fishtown and has been fighting ever 
since he was weaned.” 

“He’s been fighting since he threw his lot with us,” 
resumed Captain Wright, “and I’m convinced that nothing 
will ever stop him. When he shipped he told me that his 
only reason for returning to the United States was to beat 
up three brothers who had played him a dirty trick. I 
believe they are foreigners, and one of them was once a 
pal of his. T wrote them all a line,’ he told me, ‘wherein 
I informed them that the sandman was coming home.’ I 
guess you know what is coming to those people.” 

“About this mutiny?” put in one of my bored col- 
leagues. 

“Oh, about that,” said Captain Wright. “Well, 
Doyle was all there was to the mutiny. He tried to drink 
up all the whisky in Campana, Argentina, and when the 
police there refused to salute the American flag he car- 
ried he started in to clean up the town, and made out 
right well. We were lying off Campana, with the anchor 


WHEN THE SANDMAN CAME AROUND 


223 


‘up and down,’ and I was fuming on the bridge when 
Mike turned up with half the populace and all the police 
crowding close upon his heels. 

“A launch got him aboard in the nick of time, and I 
immediately ordered him to quarters. Instead he lit a 
cigarette — this is an oil-tanker, mind you — and defied me 
and the world in general. In the battle that followed 
quite a few were battered up, but Mike was finally put in 
irons. When we arrived off the navy yard I thought I’d 
release him, this being his own town; but when the irons 
were taken off he started in where he laid off, and we had 
to truss him up again I don’t want to make any trouble 
for him, and if you gentlemen want to take him with you, 
you can have him and welcome.” 

I did not wait for anybody to speak up for poor Mike 
Doyle. 

“Give him over to me, cap!” I cried. “There was a 
time I managed this boy. I guess I can grubstake him 
now. Trot Mike out!” 

Thus it came about that Mike Doyle, patriotic pugil- 
ist, went back with us on the tug, and later to my rooms 
in Kensington. His face was battered out of all human 
semblance, and he was forced to talk painfully out of one 
comer of his, mouth. 

“I’ll remember this. Bob,” he whistled rather than 
said. “All I want is a shot at a purse, and we’ll go fifty- 
fifty.” 

' But a face like Mike’s couldn’t be expected to heal 
in a day, and it was all of two weeks before he looked 
anything like himself. And when Mike Doyle was looking 
normal he was something of a picture, as is any big- 
framed, big-hearted, clean-minded young man who is as 
bronzed as an Indian and muscled like a Samson. 

When I saw Mike rounding into shape I had many 
rosy hopes and plans for the future. 

“Mike,” said I, “we’ll not take anything except a 
wind-up. You’re still a great drawing card, and it’s your 
ambition to become champion, I know so — ” 


224 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Hold on a minute, Bob,” said Mike quickly. '‘My 
ambition is to beat the sawdust out of three men. They 
are the Rigo brothers, and they are all in the fighting- 
game. They were with me on the other side for a time, 
and one of them impersonated me in a fight with Dan 
Burly.” 

“No wonder you^re sore on them!” I cried. “Why, 
this Burly fellow ought to be pie for you.” 

“He’s a fighter, this Dan Burly,” said Mike. “The 
guy that impersonated me is no slouch at that, but Burly 
tucked him in his little cot and pulled down the curtains. 
You’ve heard of Billy Gallagher.” 

“Who hasn’t?” I wanted to know. 

“Well, you go get Billy Gallagher for one and after 
him I want Knockout Kelly and Cyclone Callahan. They 
are the three men I’m after! They know it, too, for I 
wrote them to say that the sandman was coming home. 
If I keep my health, I’m going to put the three of them to 
sleep!” 

“So Gallagher, Kelley, and Callahan are brothers, 
are they?” said I. “Well, I am somewhat accustomed to 
the Irish monnikers these foreigners use, but for ' one 
family to grab so many Hibernian names is a little unus- 
ual. Do you know them well, Mike?” 

Mike grinned. 

“I was born and raised with them,” he said. “But 
here’s the difference I was bom in the United States and 
they were bom in Hungary. Yes, they’re Huns all right 
enough, and black-hearted Huns at that. When 1 was in 
Cuiba with them they wouldn’t say they were citizens of 
the United States, because they told me to my teeth they 
never intended to take out their papers. That got my goat 
and I fought the three of them. They gave me a fine 
trimming, I’m telling you, and then Johann — ^that’s Kelly 
— put over that rotten trick with Dan Burley because he’s 
the oldest and biggest and looks something like me. The 
champion did me a good turn by knocking the dirty Hun 
cold.” 


WHEN THE SANDMAN CAME AROUND 


225 


can make this Johann Kelly as popular as small- 
pox by exposing him," I suggested; but Mike shook his 
head. 

“No,” he dissented, “I’m the guy that gets on his 
back and rides him to a feeble fare-you-well. Keep your 
mouth shut about what I’ve told you.” 

The Sti Patrick’s Day card at the Nonpareil A’^letic 
Club was rich with Rigos, for Billy Gallagher, Cyclone 
Callahan, and Knockout Kelly were all billed to appear. 
The best I could do for Mike was to get him the first pre- 
liminary with Gallagher, who was one of those hundred 
and fort'y-five-pound lightweights who ought never be 
permitted to fight a man weighing less than two hun- 
dred. 

I told Jack Gillen, owner, manager, and referee of 
the club, that Mike Doyle was entitled to the wind-up in- 
stead of a preliminary at catch-weights, but he said he 
had tried his periscope and could not see it that way. 

“Doyle was a star before he started his world-wide 
campaign against prohibition,” declared Gillen, “but he’s 
down to a hundred and forty-five pounds, and I don’t 
think he’s there at that weight. Anyhow, this is an all- 
star show, and the first card is expected to be as good as 
the last.” 

Mike went into the ring weighing over one hundred 
and fifty pounds, his inscrutable face as immobile as stone. 
Gallagher, a weasel-visaged young man with coal-black 
hair, sat down in his corner with a look of amazement. 

“Say,” he said to Gillen, as his mouth wrenched a 
smile, “this guy was advertised as Young Mike Doyle, and 
he’s the real Mike Doyle.” 

“He’s pretty young, too,” laughed Gillen. “Don’t 
mind if he has a few pounds on you. He hasn’t fought 
anything but the booze for over a year.” 

Gallagher took the center of the ring with a look of 
stark despair, and in another instant they were at it. Did 
you ever see anybody shoot mackerel in a barrel? Did 
you ever see a steam-roller try to beat a sixty-horsepower 


226 


RING AND DIAMOND 


auto in a race? Did you ever see a rabbit challenge a 
royal Bengal tiger at catchweights? Well, the mackerel, 
the steam-roller, and the rabbit all stood a better chance 
than Billy Gallagher. 

It wasn’t a fight. It was assault and battery, man- 
slaughter, and first-degree homicide. Mike’s natural- 
born and ineradicable penchant for combat was never 
more strikingly exhibited. 

In the dressing-room, when I asked him if the anni- 
hilation of Gallagher had not caused a pang of pity, Mike 
stated his views on the matter with perfervid fluency. 

‘‘Don’t talk to me about pity for that dirty Hun,” he 
growled. “I could have given an American a chance, but 
not that foreign-born, snake. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill 
him!” 

We were aJbout to leave the dressing-room when 
Jack Gillen entered without the formality of knocking. 

“Just a minute, you fellows!”. he cried. “The man 
carded to meet Cyclone Callahan has failed to put in an 
appearance and I’m stuck for a substitute. After putting 
Gallagher away in two rounds, I though Mike here would 
be fresh enough to take another bout.” 

Mike was fairly beside himself and alternately 
hugged Gillen and myself in a transport of delight. 

“Tickled to death. Jack!” he chortled. “Lead the 
way!” 

Cyclone Callahan was heavier than Gallagher by at 
least twenty pounds; he was taller, swarthier, and had a 
primal bulldog jaw. Although he tried to look majesti- 
cally calm as Mike climbed through the ropes, his lips 
twitched and his brows knit thoughtfully. He stoned 
the fight a hard-eyed, thin-lipped young giant who looked 
to be, and was, the embodiment of fearlessness. 

But Mike Doyle simply laughed at him. Walking 
into him, he feinted for a couple of seconds and like a 
streak whipped over a solid left to the face. The Cy- 
clone was thrown into confusion at once and backed 
away, covering up. Mike followed him and, executing a- 


WHEN THE SANDMAN CAME AROUND 


227 


quick shift, plunged his left into the solar plexus. The 
Cyclone staggered back, his eyes popping, and Mike 
whipped over the finishing punch, a right to the jaw. 

A thin, wintry smile appeared on Mike's face. When 
the cheering started, however, he took himself to the 
dressing-room as briskly as if he had been sprung out of a 
shotgun Once there, he threw back his head and laughed 
long and gleefully. 

“Robert," he chuckled, “the sandman is going the 
rounds — and making them shorter!" 

“Let’s hustle out of here and get an eyeful of the 
main bout," I suggested. 

His face grew as black as a thundercloud. “Bob," 
he said hoarsely, “the main bout is between Neil Campbell 
and Knockout Kelly. I know Neil Campbell, and he’d 
do anything in the world for me." He hitched himself 
forward to the edge of the chair. “I once did a good turn 
for Neil, and I’m going to ask him to return the favor 
tonight. I’m going to ask him to get too sick to fight this 
Hungarian who is .masquerading as an Irishman I I’m 
going to ask Gillen for the main bout if Campbell will 
help me out!" 

Before I could say a word he had - slipped into his 
bath-robe and out into the corridor. He was back inside 
of ten minutes, his face lit up by his sparkling eyes. 

“Bob, it’s going through!" he cried radiantly. “The 
semi-windup is now on, and the minute it is over Neil will 
be taken with a beautiful attack of cramps. Now, you 
must collect what’s coming to me and pay Neil what Gillen 
agreed to give him for the main bout. And you had bet- 
ter go out now and get near Gillen, so that you will be the 
first to get his ear when he learns of Neil’s cramps." 

When Gillen received the news of Neil Campbell’s 
sudden indisposition and found me at his side with a 
proffer of Mike’s services I almost wilted under the sus- 
picion that lurked in his stern eyes. 


228 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“What’s this coming to, anyway?” he demanded 
gruffly. “Is Mike Doyle 'the only scrapper in the world, 
or is this the way he celebrates St. Patrick’s Day?” 

“Mike is eager to establish a record. Jack,” I replied. 
“Furthermore, he has a grudge against Kelly. The fans 
will like the fight, I assure you.” 

“All right, then; same figure I offered Campbell. 
Bring Mike on!” 

Mike came on, smiling and bowing to the tremendous 
wave of cheering that greeted his appearance. He made 
a superb figure as he tossed aside his bath-robe and walked 
about, testing the ropes; his muscles leaped out of him 
when he moved, writhing like tortured snakes. 

Acrpss the ring Knockout Kelly sat in his corner, 
scornful, defiant, and looking as fit as a Stradivarius. 
He was not as tall as the Cyclone, but he was broad, 
rugged and sinewy, with long, powerful gorilla-like arms 
out of all proportion to his stature. His lean and ag- 
gressive countenance looked not unlike that of Mike 
Doyle, without the humor and intelligence that the latter’s 
possessed. - ’ 

It needed no second look to tell one that he was 
arbitrary in disposition and manner, ill-disciplined in his 
temper and passions, and vehement and belligerent in 
speech. But his shelving jaw looked as if it could turn 
the edge of an ax. 

From the very beginning the last of the Rigos fought 
desperately, hopelessly perhaps, but with the idea of 
battling so long as he was able to lift one of his arms. 
For three rounds Mike could not get going properly. 
Kelly stood him off, mostly with his left, but when he did 
get started he was a demon in human form His eyes 
gleamed fiercely as he kept boring in, hitting harder and 
faster as the bout wore on. 

In the fifth round Kelly came out of his corner wav- 
ering, bleeding, and almost blind. Mike leaped at him 
like a panther, crashing right and left to the chin. Kelly’s 
knees sagged, and he slowly crumpled to the floor. 


WHEN THE SANDMAN CAME AROUND 


229 


^‘Quitting, are you?’’ taunted Mike, and then, as 
Kelly came upright, he stepped in with a demoniacal smile 
and finished him with a terrible right to the jaw. 

The audience, roaring its admiration, made a dive for 
Mike, but I kept him from their congratulatory olutches by 
jerking him through a disused exit. He crouched on a 
fire-escape until the mob dispersed and then went unmo- 
lested to his dressing-room. 

“Bob,” he said when he was dressed for the street, 
“the sandman has visited the Rigo family, and we shall 
celebrate with a good feed. Let’s go to the swelled res- 
taurant in town.” 

“Not tonight,” I said. “Business before pleasure, 
Mike. There’s money to be collected and a few little 
bills to be paid. Besides, we’ve got to see the newspaper 
men and issue a challenge to Dan Burly!” 

But the next morning, after bathing and shaving, we 
did visit the swellest restaurant in town. It was about 
ten o’clock, and the orchestra had just started pla3fing 
“Auld Lang Syne.” 

“Get up!” barked Mike, and shot to his feet. Won- 
deringly I followed suit. Then Mike made a dive at a 
bored-looking individual who was seated at the nearest 
table, conning the menu with a meticulous eye. 

“Get on your feet!” roared Mike. “Stand up, or I’ll 
knock your block off!” 

The stranger got up very suddenly. 

“Commence!” he hissed, and in another second they 
were at it. It was great while is lasted. Bare fists 
popped off square jaws with a report like a pistol-shot. 
There ensued just two minutes of such epochal fighting as 
eclipsed the most dazzling performance I had ever wit- 
nessed in a squared circle. Then Mike Doyle shot under 
a table from a right hook to the point of the jaw that left 
him motionless and corpselike where he fell. 

And Dan Burly, middleweight champion, resumed his 
interrupted perusal of the menu with a mien that be- 
tokened conscious rectitude. 


230 


RING AND DIAMOND 


When I had walked Mike about forty blocks around 
town he began to shown signs of normal intelligence. 

“What did you hit Dan Burly for, Mike?” I in- 
quired, as gently as I could. ^ 

He stopped short in his tracks. 

“Was that Dan Burly?” he gasped. “Why didn’t he 
stand up when that orchestra played the national an- 
them? Is he another Hun?” * ^ 

“Well, hardly,” I responded. “He’s a born and bred 
American. He’s playing at a theatre down the street here, 
and meets all comers at the end of the show.” 

By this time Mike .was pretty groggy, and when we 
came to a long line of men strung around the corner of 
a big building he fished a bank-note out of his pocket and 
fell in at the tail of the procession. 

“I’m going to get tickets and we’ll study that guy’s 
style!” he said. ^ 

I smiled and let him go, and he shuffled along with the 
moving line till at last he found himself in front of a flat- 
topped desk behind which sat a gray-haired man in uni- 
form. I stood to one side, scarcely able to restrain my 
mirth. 

“Do you want to enlist?” asked a stern, incisive 
voice. Bewildered, Mike looked around for me" saw me 
almost convulsed with silent laughter, then squared his 
shoulders and shot back: “Sure as hell!” 

“No profanity. What’s your name?” 

“Francis Rigo,” answered Mike Doyle, and I was 
aware for the flrst time that the sandman had indeed vis- 
ited a certain Hungarian family with a penchant for Irish 
names, and just one American member. 


All Primed 


“Ive got the greatest news for you, Forrest.’^ Mor- 
timer Berry’s speech was thick and unctuous with good 
feeling. “I’m going to let the^ champion box your boy, 
and we’re ready to sign articles whenever you say the 
word.” 0 

Mason Forrest smote his open palm resoundingly 
with his doubled fist. “What’s up your sleeve, old fox?” 
he cried. “You can’t tell me there isn’t something 
rotten in Denmark when you change front like this. Not 
so long ago you pretended to think that a bout between 
the champion and Larry Wheeler wouldn’t draw flies^ 
What’s back of all this?” 

Mortimer Berry broke into a laugh not wholly free 
from embarrassment. “Not a thing, old-timer,” he re- 
plied. “Don’t get an idea that I’ve got evil designs •on 
your meal ticket.” 

Turning half around in his chair, his right arm on 
the chair’s back, his eyes covered by his hand. Mason 
Forrest sat for more than a minute without movement 
save'for the workings of his face and throat. 

“Mort Berry,” he said at length, TTis words coming 
with painful indistinctness, “there was a time when I 
would knock a man down who said those words to me. I 
never used any boxer for a meal ticket, and I never will. 
If taking a lad from a life of unskilled labor and spends 
ing time and money on him because he shows only the 
promise of being an exceptional ring artist is a proceed- 
ing to be condemned, then I have nothing to say; but if I 
can make a champion boxer out of a poor fellow who 
would otherwise know nothing but poverty and hard 


RING AND DIAMOND 


work, I think I am entitled to a small portion of his earn- 
ings as long as I continue to work for his interests. I 
have been a manager of fighters for twenty-five years, and 
no one that I have ever handled can say he learned from 
me a single thing that savored of unfairness,” 

Berry’s laugh was the mere ghost of one, empha- 
sized by a wrinkling of the ivory skin at the comers of 
his eyes. “I echo your sentiments, old-timer,” he soothed. 
“I didn’t mean anything by saying ‘meal ticket.’ It’s a 
common expression heard on every side. Don’t get angry. 
I’m here to do business. You can sign up for Larry right 
now, and I’ll split fifty-fifty.” 

“Why should you, 'Mort, why should you?” asked 
Forrest in a slow, sober voice. “I’ve known you long 
enough to know that you are not , animated by a pure 
spirit of charity, and you were never accused of owning 
such a special brand of idiocy as to offer fifty-fifty to a 
contender unless — unless you have another proposition. 
But I’m warning you that if my boy fights he won’t lay 
down for all the money in the world. We won’t stand 
for a frame-up.” 

“Nothing like that, old-timer. I want everything on 
the level, and I’m making you a generous offer.” 

‘ “That’s what makes me hesitate, Mort. It’s not a 
bit like you, and I’m frank enough to say so.” 

“Pile it on. I’m able to bear it. But sign the ar- 
ticles and I’ll forgive all!” 

“First tell me, Mort, why after refusing us a contest 
for two years, you suddenly agree to a bout and offer 
terms a champion never dreams of offering?” 

“You’re old suspicion himself, Forrest; but I’ll ex- 
plain the puzzle for your especial benefit.” There was 
something distinctly feline in Berry’s purring tones. 
“Larry Wheeler returns from the battlefields of France 
suffering from shell shock. As one of Pershing’s veter- 
ans he has the whole country at his feet — ^more than ever 
now since the war has been so gloriously won. There 
will never be another drawing card like him. And my 


ALL PRIMED 


233 


■boy, Dick Webb, while middleweight champion of the 
world, is passed by with undisguised apathy. His career 
has been swept under a dark cloud. If he is never 
shunned neither is he ever sought. Do you follow me?” 

“So far. Go on!” 

“Well, the fight promoters will hang up the biggest 
purse ever offered, and Dick will promise to enlist if he 
loses the championship. Won’t that get ’em, old-timer? 
Besides, we can turn the purse over to the winner if you 
want it that way, and split the picture money.” 

“Mort, you are aware that Larry Wheeler is a victim 
of shell shock?” 

“Yes; and I am aware also that shell shock can’t pre- 
vent Larry Wheeler from donning the mitts and putting 
up the fight of his life. He is the fourth dimension of 
physical endurance, and you know it.” 

“I know that he was; I must discover what he is. 
I’ll talk the thing over with my daughter, Eunice. You 
know she nursed him when he was invalided home, and I 
think he promised her that he wouldn’t go into the ring 
again. I believe she said she would never marry my meal 
ticket. She hates the expression, too, Mort.” 

“Don’t blame her, old-timer. Don’t you know I 
think my use of that phrase got her sour on me?” Berry 
heaved a deep sigh and stared for a moment in silence be- 
fore he went on ; “And then along came Larry, and it was 
all off with Mortimer. Since Larry’s advent she has 
looked upon me and through me with eyes of disdain. 
You’ll have to admit that I retired from the field grace- 
fully.. I haven’t the well-known English inability to let 
go. I have been referred to as a meek citizen by friends 
without humorous intent.” 

“And as a sly old fox by others just as innocent of 
jest,” said Mason Forrest, dryly. “For a man of timid 
reticence,, you have been concerned in more shady deals 
than any manager I can bring to mind. By the time you 
are as old as I am, I have an idea you will be boarding 
at the expense of the State” 


234 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“That’s unkind; but I’ll forgive you if you sign the 

A wary look came into Forrest s eyes. Nothing 
doing, Mort,” he said decisively. “I’ll talk the matter 
over with Larry. He’ll be here this evening with his new 
manager — Eunice. If he thinks he is fit to fight, and the 
girl will let him, why I guess it won’t be hard to arrange 
things.” 

“Then I might call here tonight with Webb?” 

“Yes; I suppose you might.” 

“Thanks, old-timer; look for me about nine o’clock.” 

Outside the Forrest home Berry was joined by a 
flashily dressed person who walked with a loud and de- ' 
termined tread. 

“Well, What’s new?” asked this personage as he fell 
into step beside Berry. ^ 

“Nothing,” replied Berry feverishly. “The old bird 
wouldn’t fall into the trap. He’s going to talk it over 
with Wheeler and the girl tonight, and of course our 
chances are slim. But I’m to take you back there with 
me, and our game is to make them fight. We’ve got to 
call ’em cowards and quitters. It’s easy money, my boy, 
if we can get a contest.” 

“Maybe, and maybe not. I never felt sure of this 
Wheeler chap.” 

“I know only too well you didn’t, but I’m telling 
you it’s a sure thing.” 

“I’ve got all to lose, though,” complained Webb. 

“Oh, can that stuff!” rejoined Berry with uncon- 
cealed disgust. “Wheeler is suffering a shell shock that 
will finish his military and ring career. Do you know 
how he got it? Well, I heard it from his pals' among 
Pershing’s vets. His company had been ordered to attack 
a German trench, and he was caught in the wire entangle- 
ments so he couldn’t move. While he hung there, along 
came a big shell, and he shut his eyes and prayed. He 
woke up in a hospital, wounded, for the blast had blown 
him fifty feet and covered him with mud. The shock had 


N 


ALL PRIMED 


235 


broken his nerves so that he couldn’t stand the sound of a 
gun. Do you get that much, stupid?” 

“Sure!” 

“He couldn’t stand the sound of a gun, and a short 
while ago, after he got through speaking for the Liberty 
Loan in a theater, I was close to his box when a revolver 
was discharged on the stage. He screeched like a woman 
and dived under the seat. If the house hadn’t been dark- 
ened everybody would have seen our hero flop. I saw 
him — saw his comrades drag him to his feet and laugh at 
him. When the lights went up I had vamoosed, because 
I didn’t want him to see me.” 

“Well?” 

“Well, don’t that give us our opportunity? Do you 
want me to sing it to you? I’ll fire a gun in your comer 
in the second round, and Eunice Forrest can marry the 
thing that will squeal and run out of the ring at the 
sound of the shot. But we got to get him into a ring 
before we can make him run out, and you can help me 
out on that part.” 

“Show me how!” said Webb eagerly. “I’ll be on the 
job!” 

That same evening, in the parlor of the Forrest home, 
Lawrence Wheeler, thin, bronzed and sombre-eyed, made 
an unforgettable picture as he faced the furry-cheeked, 
broad-chested Dick Webb, with ravishing Eunice, her in- 
dignant father, and the audacious Berry forming the 
background. Two young men of more widely varying 
characteristics and temperament were never brought to- 
gether. 

Dick Webb, with a shy effrontery of an absolutely 
unique sort, had pushed his way into the house and 
hurled his challenge in a manner almost as impressive as 
it was uncivil. 

“I’m sorry to have to intrude this way,” he began 
like one reciting a lesson, “but I’d like to prove your 
ability as a fighter. You shouted for a match before you 
enlisted. Have the Germans taken all the fight out of 


236 


RING AND DIAMOND 


you? ril tell you to your teeth you’re afraid of me. 
You know I’m your master!” 

“That’s a mouthful!” chimed in Forrest with a de- 
risive laugh. “Larry, when in condition, never knew a 
master. His record speaks for itself.” 

“May I he permitted to observe that we are willing 
to wager any amount on the result of a fight?” gushed 
Mortimer Berry. “We, too, are possessed of a record.” 

“A record of audacity unparalleled and trickery 
without compare,” grunted the old manager with an angry 
shake of his iron-gray head. 

“Whiter than snow and purer than the lily, rather,” 
dissented the irrepressible Berry. “We do not challenge 
and disappear. We are glad to learn Mr. Wheeler could 
lick a few Germans with cannon. We ask only that he 
demonstrate his superiority with the padded gloves over 
one fellow American. We hail his return with the keen- 
est delight. A man who had the stomach for slaughter- 
ing Huns can’t object to a harmless contest with pillows.” 

“No fear!” snorted Forrest. 

“But he has not said no,” taunted Berry, and all 
eyes focused on Larry Wheeler, who, as the champion’s 
loquacious manager pointed out, promptly developed a 
sincere and lasting appreciation of the gilded value of 
silence. 

Eunice Forrest looked on this scene with strange 
calm. She was the very essence of daintiness, reminis- 
cent of the little Dresden china shepherdess one sees, 
with hair of that strawlike tint usually associated with 
musical comedy — the tint which friends call flaxen, ene- 
mies peroxide. Her eyes were bright as new beads, dart- 
ing glances of suspicion and distrust. 

• Wheeler’s eyes went to the ceiling and his lips tight- 
ened. A keen observer would have seen that he chafed 
under the silence like a thoroughbred horse under the 
gratuitous strokes of the whip. His was the face of a 
man with a knife in his heart. 


ALL PRIMED 


237 


“I^m out of condition,” he whispered hoarsely. “I 
don’t want to fight now.” 

“You never wanted to fight at any time!” blazed 
Dick Weibb. “I could lick you with one hand tied behind 
me, you yellow dog!” 

“You can’t take that, Larry!” said Eunice evenly, her 
face suddenly stormy. “I release you from your promise 
not to fight.” 

For one spellbound, palpitating moment, Wheeler 
gazed helplessly at her, then rushed from the room and 
slammed the door behind him. 

“Daddy,” said Eunice, “I will leave you to arrange 
all the details. Only make sure of this much; we’ll 
make a side bet of ten thousand dollars, and the moving- 
picture rights go to the Red Cross.” 

Five minutes later Champion Dick Webb and his 
elated manager left the Forrest home with the air of good 
workmen who had done their task in a most satisfactory 
manner. 

When they had gone, Forrest turned to his daughter 
with a troubled frown. 

“Berry has something up his sleeve, girl,” he growled. 
“I don’t know what it is, and it worries me.” 

Eunice daintily yawned with a vast appearance of 
indifference. “Mortimer Berry,” she confided, “has noth- 
ing up his sleeve but his arm. I wouldn’t worry, if I were 
you.” 

“No?” with elaborate scorn. “Well, if my experi- 
ence is worth anything. Berry and Webb will try to pull a 
trick of some kind when the fight comes off.” 

“I’ll be looking at them when they do, daddy!” cried 
Eunice, and she spoke the truth, for she occupied a box 
at the ringside and waited for the battle t'o begin with an 
impatience that bordered on anxiety. 

The contest was an event even among fashionable 
folk. Society flocked to it from far and near. Many 
of the women looked as much at home as a hen in a trol- 


238 


RING AND DIAMOND 


ley car, but stuck it out in the belief that they were 
seeing the seamy side of life. 

Service men were on hand to cheer their idol, and on 
the slightest provocation they developed vocal attributes 
surprisingly akin to the tones of a steam caliope. Not a 
man of them would have missed the fight for all the gold 
of the mines of Solomon. They could not believe that 
Larry Wheeler was anything but invulnerable. They 
could not associate him in their minds with defeat. 

Good old Mason Forrest had mapped out a plan of 
battle for Wheeler. “Berry’s got a joker hidden away 
somewhere,” he said savagely; “but you know that in 
skating over thin ice safety lies in speed. That must be 
your gafne, boy. Tear in right after the handshake and 
cripple him before he can get set. Try to think you’re 
whaling the crown prince, and you’ll flatten him in the 
first round.” 

It was a fervent hope rather than an ardent faith 
that inspired that statement, but Wheeler obeyed orders. 
Webb little knew at the handshake that Larry was a hu- 
man dynamo, all primed to shock him in the first seconds. 
Two awful lefts and three terrific rights found body and 
jaw before the throbbing clangor of the starting gong had 
died out. Webb was whirled, dazed and tottering, into 
his own corner, where he went into a desperate clinch. 
Over Wheeler’s shoulder he telegraphed Berry with his 
startled eyes just as Larry shook him off and rocked him 
like a storm-stricken reed with a volley of uppercuts. 
They were a blur of. shifting bodies and flying fists when 
the sharp, staccato bark of a revolver rang out three times 
in succession. 

Berry had kept his head, and now looked to see the 
result. He saw Dick Webb collapse like a pricked balloon 
from a terrific right hook, heard the referee count him 
out, and saw the smiling Larry Wheeler raised on the 
shoulders of a delirious throng of service men. 

] 


ALL PRIMED 


239 


An hour later, in Wheeler’s dressing room, Mortimer 
Berry, true to form, had the impudence to congratulate 
the new champion. 

“Always knew you could lick Webb,” he said suavely, 
“but I had a trick to make you run out. Did you ever 
have shell shock or was it all a fake?” 

“I had it bad enough,” replied Wheeler, grinning, 
“but not when I dived under my seat for your benefit at 
the theater that night. I knew you’d let Webb box if 
you thought I wasn’t fit When I was sent home and 
Eunice started to nurse me, I couldn’t speak. She sent 
me into a closet one afternoon to get something. When 
I opened the door a dozen dishpans fell down on me, and 
before I knew it I was saying; “Eunice, that’s no place 
for dishpans!’ But it cured the shell shock, and she 
laughed at me !” 

Berry caught a note of the silvery mirth out in the 
corridor. “I’m going now,” he said gravely. “The 
laugh is on me, and I won’t hear the last of it for many a 
day.” 



4 

t 



s 


* 


1 






» 









» 




v-" • 


*r>.\/ 


k . 


•'y 


N:'>-. 






' ^ 



p r 


When the 
White Hope Fled 


Mr. Thornton Langdon leaned languidly back in his 
chair, and indolently puifed a few rings of scented cigar- 
ette smoke into the air. 

“It will be the easiest money you ever found, Bud,” 
he prophesied, “and I know whereof I speak. You could 
beat two Jack McKeevers in the same ring, believe me.” 

“Let’s have the story. Tommy,” yawned “Bud” 
Ryan. “Them two McKeever twins used to be cracker- 
jacks once.” 

“Mike was a cracker jack,” admitted Mr. Langdon, 
“but I never could see where his brother Jack got off. 
And it’s this same Jack that challenges you. Why, he 
couldn’t put an invalid away with an ax. He’s the miss- 
ing good thing. Bud, loosely woven and soft to^ the touch. 

I know that fellow, believe me.” 

“Managed him once, dinja?” The middleweight 
champion’s gray eyes were bent upon his manager in 
frosty scrutiny. “Dinja hand him the double cross or 
somethin’?” 

Mr. Langdon’s face flushed, for the other’s eyes 
seemed to read the very depths of his soul. 

“I’ll tell you all about that,” he promised. “You . 
see, I had a bout at the Western A. C. all fixed for Jack 
Twin McKeever, as he is always billed. He was to lose 
to Gus Boger, but when I told him the scheme, he said 
he had never fought a crooked fight in his life, and didn’t 
intend to. So he went in, and won. Later on I got 


242 


RING AND DIAMOND 


square Jack was sick and in need of money. I got him 
to consent to meet the Akron Giant. You know what a 

false alarm he was, but at the last minute I had bam 

Bangford substituted, said Samuel being under my in- 
structions. Jack Twin wasn’t right, and they had to 
carry him to the dressing room after the knock-out. He 
was almost a corpse.” 

In Bud Ryan’s eyes there was a mixture of condem- 
nation and disgust, which he took no pains to conceal. 
Langdon shifted uneasily. 

' “He done for me in the go-off. Bud,” he defended, 
scowling blackly. “I was only getting even for the raw 
stuff he pulled on me. Why, he’s been plotting ever since 
to put one across on me — sure he has. I’ll admit I’m 
glad he wants some of your game, for that puts him in 
line for another beating. You see, I found out something 
that will convince him — 'something that will convince you 
he couldn’t win a fight with a lead pump full of burial 
permits.” 

“Come across with it. Tommy.” 

“He’s a consumptive! That’s real. Bud. My doctor 
examined him before I let him get away. Last time I 
saw Jack Twin he was a mere outline of his old self, aud 
yet he has- been phenomenally successful in short bouts. 
He’s clever enough to make a monkey out cf some good 
men in -short-distance bouts, but he’s not able to go any 
over a long route, believe me.” 

“The clever guys drop as hard when I put over 
the sleep slam,” shrugged Ryan. ‘What’s become of 
Mike Twin?” 

“He’s a white hope; cleaned up all the promising 
heavies in sight, and Pitney, the millionaire, has him in 
training out on the coast. He’d make five of Jack, for 
he tips the scales at one hundred and eighty-five. If he 
had Jack’s science, I think he could take the big black’s 
measure. But it’s the scientific lunger you want, Bud, 
for he’ll be soft. Why, Sol Oppenheim, who’s managing 


WHEN THE WHITE HOPE FLED 


243 


the stiff now, wants to 'bet five thousand dollars on the 
side." 

“Don’t take that kike Oppenheim for a mark," ad- 
monished the champion. “There’s something in it when 
he puts up real money." 

“Of course there is!" cried Langdon. “It’s another 
barney on the easy, long-suffering public. Oppy and his 
gang make up the side bet to show the public what per- 
fect confidence they have in thir man, and then they gob- 
ble up all the McKeever money they can reach. It’s an 
old game, but it brings the money every time. Will you 
back out of a match with a lunger. Bud?" 

“Send for Oppenheim and sign articles," commanded 
the middleweight champion. 

Next morning Bud and his manager received a visit 
from Messrs. McKeever and Oppenheim. Bud viewed 
his rival with a smile of disdain. Jack Twin McKeever 
was tall and thin to the point of emaciation. He looked 
like a bloated string. He had pale-red hair, a long, ta- 
pering hand, and a face like a tomahawk. His smile was 
placid and ingenuous. - * 

“This will be my last fight, win or lose," he re- 
marked, and lapsed into silence. His manager did all the 
talking. 

Mr. 'Oppenheim was a lean, shabby man, who as- 
sumed a cringing attitude that was the last stage of hu- 
mility. He wore a long coat, a flat derby hat that came 
well down over his ears, and slouchy shoes. He plucked 
feebly at his straggling whiskers, and smiled with the 
dubiety of an individual who half expected to be kicked. 

“Shack is not vot he used to be," he murmured, 
pointing to his protege for physical corroboration, “but 
ve been retty to take de chance. Perhaps, Mr. Langdon, 
de shampeen vill say to de papers dot Shack been a hard 
nut to crack yet." 

To hear Mr. Oppenheim’s subdued accents was a 
lesson in the art of voice production. 


244 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Easy to see your brain is a loafing place for ideas,” 
Langdon complimented. “Of course, we are dreadfully 
afraid we have caught a Tartar in Mr. McKeever.” There 
was a sneer in his voice that made the challenger’s lips 
come together in a white, rigid line. “We will do every- 
thing that’s usual with the gentlemen of the press. The 
gate will be split seventy-five and. twenty-five ; that’s the 
best we can .do for you.” 

“Ve only vant fair play, Mr. Langton.” 

“You’ll get it!” grunted Mr. Langdon. “But it’s the 
guy that afways shouts for fair play who insists on the 
buried ace and fights in packs, Oppy. We are being 
mighty good to you fellows, and seeing what you’ll 
pocket from this thing, don’t you think you ought to buy 
one?” 

In a tremuolus murmur Mr. Oppenheim declined to 
purchase. He was a man of ultracorrect habits, and, un- 
like Mr. Langdon, he did not sit up with, or set t^em up 
for, the boys. He had a corporeal abundance of faults, 
but a wanton expenditure of money was not one of them. 
Before he left, however, he had a glass of soda water at 
Mr. Langdon’s expense. That astute individual noted 
with ill-concealed delight that Jack Twin McKeever 
relishfully tossed off a generous whisky. 

That evening the newspapers announced the signing 
of the articles of agreement, and the fight became at 
once a topic of consuming interest. Expert opinion was 
prettly fairly divided, and everybody seemed well agreed 
that the historical occasion when Greek met Greek would 
be completely outdone when Jack Twin McKeever and 
Champion Bud Ryan met in the ring. 

Willard W. Hawton, the Nestor of sporting journal- 
ism, at whose feet other writers sat in reverent pupilage, 
picked Jack Twin McKeever to win, and related the story 
of the twins. 

Some twenty-six years ago the wife of Dennis Mc- 
Keever, a hardy foundryman in the little town of Bul- 
lard, Ohio, presented him with a brace of sons. To dis- 


WHEN THE WHITE HOPE FLED 


245 


tinguish them as they lay in their cradles, the wrist of 
one was knotted with a blue ribbon, and the wrist of the 
other with pink. Neighbors came from far and near to 
look at the dimpled youngsters, because the advent of 
two babies is more interesting to every one. A thousand 
times a day it was said that the babies were as like as two 
peas in a pod. They were named John and Michael. 

' From dimpled kiddies they grew to be great, strap- 
ping lads, alike to the eyes of strangers in every curl of 
their auburn locks, in every twinkle of their steel-blue 
eyes. Verily one might say to the other: “Methinks you 
are my glass, and not my brothei*.” In the schoolhouse 
where their names may be found carved in true boyish 
fashion under the lids of two certain desks, many are the 
tales that have been handed down about the great friend- 
ship they had for each other. The good fortune of one 
was never complete unless it reflected that of the brother. 
They had conned their lessons from the same books, they 
had walked together, driven together, shared the same 
failures, the same punishments, the same rewards. And 
so they came to enter the prize ring, where they had won 
equal honors. 

Mr. Hawton acknowledged the pluck and punishing 
power of the middleweight champion, but pointed out 
that Jack McKeever’s skill was something to be proud of 
and to glory in. No cleverer man ever guided a glove — 
he was sui generis in the legerdemain of flsticuffs. Ryan, 
he contended, was never a star of the first magnitude, 
and should never have occupied any but an interstellar 
niche in pugilism. 

During the tiflie Jack Twin McKeever spent in town 
he showed marked disapproval of strangers and news- 
paper reporters. He was very grave, almost repellent, 
and not at all inclined to be more than coldly courteous 
even to old friends. When he moved into his training 
quarters in an uninhabited portion of the country, he ex- 
cluded all visitors, including the gentry of the press. 
Leaving him to the obscurity of his hermitage, the news- 


246 


RING AND DIAMOND 


paper men flocked to the Ryan camp, where they were, 
received with open arms. 

“We don’t look for ah easy victory,” Langdon told 
them, “but the championship will not change hands. This 
McKeever is a wonder, but the champion has transformed 
many a much- touted hurricane into a deal calpi. It will 
be a battle worth going miles to see.” 

Langdon treated the representatives of the press like 
dynamite, with tenderest respect. The legends he re- 
lated in connection with Bud Ryan’s countless accom- 
plishments and deeds of valor would have imade an am- 
bitious cyclopedia. When he was not placing bets on the 
champion, he devoted himself to smooth, innocuous com- 
pilations of pretty fiction. 

On the other hand, the only word from the McKeever 
camp was that the challenger was in prime fettle, and 
advised his friends to wager the family plate on his 
chances. His attempt to wrest the championship from 
Bud Ryan was going to be very well worth watching. 
This was exactly what Langdon wished and it was quite an 
effort for him to conceal his satisfaction. 

A week went past. Then one morning the papers 
proclaimed the mysterious disappearance of the best 
white hope in the world, Mike Twin McKeever. The 
black champion’s friends said he quit cold. Even those 
who professed to think him the flower of American 
youth in the full bloom of its lustiness were inclined to 
believe their idol had lost heart. Mr. Harold Pitney 
hastened to the rescue. In his opinion, Mike McKeever 
had disappeared while suffering a transient fit of insanity. 
He had heen acting strangely for more than two weeks, 
and had been taking off flesh instead of putting it on. 
Mr. Pitney said it was hard, cruel, and unjust to say his 
protege had quit through fear, and declared his inten- 
tion of spending every cent he owned to bring Mike 
Twin McKever’s name from under a cloud and clear him 
of the charge of cowardice. 


WHEN THE WHITE HOPE FLED 


247 


On top of this Sol Oppenheim began to rake in all 
the Ryan money in sight, and, like Oliver Twist, cried for 
more. The infinite serenity with which he covered the 
staggering sums advanced by Ryan’s backers created a 
feeling of distrust in Mr. Tommy Langdon’s mind. Op- 
penheim’s uncanny aptitude for separating other people 
from their money was enough- to justify an uncomfort- 
able suspicion that everything was not as it should be. 

Oppenheim greeted the excited Langdon with soft 
murmurs of surprise and pleasure, looking all the time 
as artless as a girl at her first communion. 

“Are you putting up a job on us, you dirty kike?” 
Langdon roared. 

“Be sensible, Mr. Langdon, please,” soothed Oppen- 
heim “De money I am putting up is Pitney money. Be 
sensible, please, and take some of it.” 

“I certainly will!” said Langdon, with an explosive 
guffaw. “Pitney must be in love with the McKeevers!” 

Oppenheim patted his visitor on the back, and they 
spent a very amicable evening over the billiard table. 

At last the day set for the fight for the middleweight 
championship of the world rolled around. Thousands 
fought for admission to the arena. Additional thousands, 
unable to gain entrance, riotously roared their disappoint- 
ment outside. If the public regarded the mill with glad 
approval, the weather was equally considerate. The 
morning broke clear and bright, and by three p. m., a half 
hour before the fight was scheduled to begin, the-day was 
as perfect as one could wish. The air was balmy and 
soft, and the sky a turquoise flecked with sprays of pearl. 

It was very provoking, but Bud Ryan was not as 
cozily confident as he thought he had a right to feel. He 
was unable to dismiss a highly distressing presentiment 
that there was a tragedy impending. When he acquaint- 
ed his manager with the state of his feelings, Langdon 
laughed 


248 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Don’t pay any attention to your emotions,” he ad- 
vised. “These doul^ts you feel will pass as a nightmare 
trots away at daybreak.” 

They did. As the champion squeezed his way to the 
ring through the densely packed aisles and caught sight 
of his opponent, already at the ringside with his retinue 
of seconds, his last lipgering doubt faded. This, then, 
was the man who contested his right to the championship. 
His eyes roved appraisingly over the other, and his lip 
curled in a contemptuous smile. It was Jack Twin Mc- 
Keever sure enough, looking better than when he last saw 
him, but still a proper subject for pity and contempt. He 
was pale and drawn, with the lean features of a medieval 
ascetic and the delicate hands of a Paderewski. 

“That’s the lunger, all right, all right,” whispered 
Bud to Langdon. He slipped through th6 ropes to the 
accompaniment of a terrific roar of applause, and bowed 
and smiled his acknowledgments. It was pleasant to be 
made much of and cheered, but it was no new experience 
to Ryan, who talked on naturally and easily to Langdon 
and his seconds. 

“As easy to lick as a postage stamp,” averred Lang- 
don,” but don’t start anything right away. Take it easy 
until about the tenth or eleventh.” 

Blang! went the bell. 

The champion leaped, crouching, to the center of the 
ring. McKeever, with an elaborate air of indifference, 
came out slowly, coaxing the other with a few naively 
undeceptive feints. Ryan grinned and pushed a straight 
left into his face. He sparred lightly, then, near the end 
of the round, played rights and lefts to face and body, 
taking good care not to land on any vital spot. His work 
was all of the showy, shadow-boxing variety, and there 
was no, damage done, but he was wildly cheered as he 
went to his corner. 

The second round was only a few seconds old, when 
the champion caught a short-arm jolt in the stomach that 
shook him from center to circumference, and made him 


WHEN THE WHITE HOPE FLED 


249 


look a bit anxious. Almost before his mind began to 
register, he received a stinging right on the jaw, and went 
to his knees. Jumping up, he attacked McKeever furi- 
ously. The latter sprinted away, laughing,, then sudden- 
ly turned and met him, countering sharply at least a dozen 
times. He circled round and round the dizzied champion, 
sending tantalizing jabs thudding home at every jump. 

Ryan swung wildly and fruitlessly. Over his face 
spread an expression of incredulous astonishment. His 
head swam, and his breath came short and hard. He 
lost the sneering bravado that had been his, and sudden 
beads of sweat stood out upon his narrow, sloping brow. 
He boxed mechanically, his forehead creased in a troubled 
frown. The bell was sweet music to the middleweight 
champion of the world. 

The minute’s rest was all too short for Bud Ryan, 
but he came quickly to the scratch These rallies were 
nothing unusual, and he was still supremely confident. 

McKeever seemed a shadowy sort of antagonist who 
possessed a mysterious reptilian faculty of merging into 
his background. Ryan’s well-intended blows went wild 
or circled his opponent’s body. He was winded, and 
had to slow down. Then McKeever cut loose, and came 
at him like a whirlwind. In a twinkling he was rocking 
with the impacts of the storming blows that rattled 
against his various, desperately shifting guards. Faster 
and faster the blows rained in. Ryan’s eyes dilated and 
narrowed, his lips parted, and he panted like a deer at 
bay. Fighting gamely, he felt as if he watched for the 
culmination of a well-understood and expected movement 
of familiar machinery. In the unflinching blue of his ad- 
versary’s eyes he read his doom. He heard Langdon’s 
warning shriek, there was a shock, and then night fell — 
night impenetrable. * 

When the new middleweight champion of the world 
gained the privacy of his room at the Hotel Danvers, 
Sol Oppenheim greeted him with all the suppressed exu- 
berance of a siphon of seltzer. 


250 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“You been a millionaire!” he chortled. “Ve all been 
better off by de fight! Mr. Pitney used his moneys for 
you, me boy. Oh, but Tommy Langdon vas a ruined man 
yet — every cent he lost on he shampeen!” 

“Send for Williard Hawton,” said the new champion. 

Hawton came into the room with congratulatory 
hand extended. The new champion took it, and the kind 
words that went with it without animation. 

“Mr. Hawton,” he said in a low, rehearsed manner, 
“I want to tell you, who have been a friend in adversity, 
what you have not known and may not guess. Mike 
Twin McKeever was not a coward and — and he is dead. 
I am Jack Twin McKeever, and I am middleweight cham- 
pion of the world, but I am also a consumptive. 

“This fight with Ryan was sought to secure revenge 
for the dirty trick Tom Langdon played on me when he 
was my manager, and it was not intended that I should 
fight Ryan. Mike had many times proved his ability to 
make the middleweight limit, and he was to be substitut- 
ed for me. Langdon’s doctor had examined me, and he 
know that I had consumption, so we figured that he would 
wager his soul on Ryan's ability to win. We knew Mike 
could take off twenty-seven pounds, and still be strong 
enough to lick a dozen Ryans. 

“But we didn’t know that Mike had tuberculosis, too. 
He found it out while at Pitney’s camp. It was what is 
known as galloping consumption, and he died after he 
disappeared from Pitney’s quarters. He died in my 
mother’s arms at Bullard, Ohio, where he is buried. So I 
had to fight, after all. Luck was with me — and I’ve 
wiped out whatever stain Langdon’s dirty trick put on the 
name of Jack Twin McKeever. I shall never fight again. 
Will you explain to the public why the white hope fled? 
I have told you the whole story, but it isn’t necessary to 
publish our little plot of revenge, is it?” 

“No,” said Hawton, “but it is necessary to let the 
public know that Mike Twin McKeever was no quitter.” 


For Good Measure 


Crankshaw knew “Biff” Thornton had a seemingly 
inherent distaste for work, but when the latter revealed 
that gymnasium stunts were his special detestation he 
thought it time to kick. 

“You can’t get fit without training, Biff,” he admon- 
ished Thornton. “I’ve handled boys who entertained the 
same notion and they are all in the scrap heap. It never 
pays to hold an opponent too cheaply. It is wise to train 
for a bout with a blind consumptive, for you never know 
what will happen.” 

Although his manager spoke as an elder might speak 
to a child, instructively, with a hint, indeed, of authority. 
Biff Thornton grinned good-naturedly and yawned. 

“Don’t get nervous. Tommy,” he drawled. “This 
fellow Loomis, is such a big piece of cheese that the mice 
follow him along the streets. You know that I’ve got 
the champion scared stiff, so why should I worry?” 

“I don’t want you to worry. Biff. I want you to 
work for this bout as if your chance for the champion- 
ship title depended on it. The boxer never lived who 
could afford to loaf in preparing for a bout even with an 
acknowledged counterfeit.” 

“Here’s one boxer who can, old top!” 

Something very like an oath escaped Tom Crank- 
shaw’s lips. 

“You are no exception to the rule, I tell you!” he 
cried. “You can’t afford to take chances. In order to 
be sure of the victory, you must condition yourself. You 
cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, and you 
cannot get in shape by shunning your training work. For 


252 


RING AND DIAMOND 


a fellow who has come as far as you have in the boxing 
world, you’ve got a surprising private stock of misinfor- 
mation about preparing for a battle. It’s my opinion 
that your conception of proper training will need re- 
vision.” 

‘‘Is that so?” Biff’s slate-blue eyes flashed omnious- 
ly. “Well, I don’t think your opinion is worth a stale 
pretzel, get me? 'And if you don’t like the way I am pre- 
paring myself, you ought to be able to figure out your 
next move. I am not the party in need of a meal ticket 
just at present, Thomas.’’ 

“You’ve never been a meal ticket for me!” chal- 
lenged Crankshaw with heat. “I brought out the present 
champion, and I have made you come along to your pres- 
ent eminence; but I can go out and get a boy to topple 
you.” 

“Maybe I’ll give you the chance. Tommy, After 
this Loomis scrap, we’ll agree to disagree. The world 
will be shocked, but we can’t help that, can we? What 
do you say?” 

“If you’ll take care of yourself,” Crankshaw offered, 
his voice softening, “I’ll guarantee to make you the pre- 
mier lightweight of the world. I’ve set out to take the 
title from the ingrate who now holds it, and all I want is 
the raw material. You, Biff, are pretty near the finished 
article. Start to train ! That is all I ask of you.” 

“I’ll do some road work now. Tommy,” contributed 
Biff, as his part of the peace treaty. “But I know this 
Loomis is a dub, and it seems a shame to me to put in a 
lot of hard work for nothing.” 

Five minutes later, Crankshaw had t;he satisfaction 
of seeing Biff Thornton jog down the road that wound its 
way through the hills in back of their training quarters. 
He was alone, and waved his hand to his manager as he 
disappeared around the first bend of the road. 

More than two hours elapsed before Thornton put in 
an appearance. Tom Crankshaw was dozing on the front 
porch when Biff came loping up, smiling broadly and 


FOR GOOD MEASURE 


253 


breathing just a shade too hard. There was a ruddy 
color in his cheeks that went well with his fair hair and 
the Saxon blue of his eyes. But there was a lump under 
both eyes and a fair-sized cut on his left cheek bone. 

Tom Crankshaw came to his feet as if shot from a 

gun. 

“What happened, Biff?’* he demanded, his eyes 
searching the other’s face with an anxiety he did not at- 
tmpt to hide. “Were you mixing it with any of the 
Loomis camp?” 

Thornton ran lightly up the steps and threw himself 
into a wicker rocker. 

‘If I didn’t think you were above such tricks, Tom,” 
sprawling out his full length and frankly panting for 
breath, “I’d think you put up a little game to make me 
see the importance of strict training.” 

“Game?” echoed Crankshaw. “Game? What kind 
of a game did you run into. Biff? For the love of our 
country, let’s hear what’s happened.” 

“Time out for a little wind,” begged Thornton, and 
after a few minutes' rest, continued : 

“I guess i had this coming to me for being so con- 
ceited as to think I could fight after loafing a month or 
two. Why, Tommy, I came near getting the worst lacing 
of my life — and by a tall hayseed fresh from some bone- 
yard at that!” 

“Go on, go on! You’re not writing a serial story.” 

“Well, I licked him,” stated Thornton with elation. 
“It was about the toughest proposition I ever handled, 
and in the shape I’m in I was near out a couple of times, 
but I managed to break the tape first — and the other 
guy's nose!” 

“And I missed every bit of it!” groaned Crankshaw. 

“You didn't miss any more than I did when the thing 
started,” pursued Biff. “That fellow wasn't anywhere I 
tried to place him until he connected with my jaw and 
laid me on my back. I guess he thought he had me snor- 
ing, and when I went back at him he must have imagined 


254 


RING AND DIAMOND 


I had risen from the dead. I didn’t do a thing to him, 
to begin with, except jostle him at a turn in the road. 
And just for that I got an awful jolt on the jaw. Why, 
you’d have thought he was trying to drive me all the way 
back to where I started from.” 

There was a shy twinkle in the manager’s eyes as he 
commented ; 

“The boob didn’t know who you were, that’s certain. 
But then our fathers have told us that place and greatness 
are, like the apples of Asphaltum, but ashes to the taste. 
Just think of a country bully taking a punch at the only 
lightweight in the world who has made the champion side- 
step him! Don’t look so disgustingly pleased with your- 
self, Biff. A hayseed is unworthy of your steel.” 

“But I’m thinking he came along in time,” observed 
Biff, with serious mien. “In my condition he came with- 
in an ace of tucking me away, and if a clodhopping farm- 
er can do that it shows that this Loomis is too dangerous 
to play as a soft thing. Tom, I’m glad it happened. It 
has taught me a lesson, and one I’m not likely to forget.” 

All of which carried Manager Tom Crankshaw to the 
summit of felicity. He had feared that Thornton, scion 
of a gentle family and college graduate as he was, could 
not be brought to accept the iron discipline of the train- 
ing camp. He clung tenaciously to the belief that he had 
in Thomton the coming world’s champion, and he knew 
that Biff couldn’t be tempted for all the gold and silver 
mined and minted since the days of King Solomon. 

Confident, careless, somewhat lazy into the bargain. 
Biff had showed sighs of kicking over the traces on the 
question of strict training; but now that danger was past. 
He had confessed the folly of loafing, and the equal 
unwisdom of undervaluing an untried opponent. The 
net result of Biff’s road encounter was to bring him to 
regard training as a somewhat delectable as well as an 
instructive diversion. In fact, he acted as if he thought 
that the omission of a solitary stunt must prove fatal to 
his championship aspirations. 


FOR GOOD MEASURE 


255 


Wade Loomis, the Whirlwind of the Woods, as he 
was styled by the sporting writers, did not make his 
meeting with Biff Thornton reflect dazzling credit upon 
himself, but he proved to the latter’s profound satisfac- 
tion that he was anything on earth but an easy mark. 
Only very unobservant persons were blind to the fact that 
the backwoods champion, for all his lack of polish, was a 
very dangerous foeman 

Thornton showed plainly that he still retained his old 
speed. He went off at the start like the whirlwind his 
adversary was suppo*sed to be, and had Loomis bewildered 
by the speed of his attack. He shot both hands hard to 
the head and body, and at times made the farmer boy look 
foolish by his clever ducking and dodging. In the third 
round, he floored Loomis with a left hook to the head, 
and as the other came off his knees and upright, Biff’s 
right described a terrific full arm smash that landed flush 
on the point of the jaw. 

And then Tom Crankshaw crawled through the 
ropes and addressed the audience in this wise : 

‘‘There is only one contender for the championship 
held by Kid Curtis, and he has demonstrated anew his 
right to a match with the artful dodger who hopes to 
retain his title by evading a man he knows to be his su- 
perior in every department of the game. On behalf of 
Biff Thornton, the actual lightweight champion of the 
world, I challenge Kid Curtis to a fight over any distance 
for any size purse, at any place in the world, and under 
any rules.” 

Sweeping as this challenge was, it took months ere 
it elicited a reply from the Curtis camp. And from the 
conditions named and the rules specified, and from subse- 
quent statements from both boxers that were published 
in the newspapers, it was perfectly obvious that Curtis 
and his manager were determined to keep clear of the 
conflict, and that Thornton was equally resolved to take 
part. 


256 RING AND DIAMOND ^ 

Curtis declared himself unequivocally for a limited 
round, no-decision contest, then agreed to a referee, pro- 
vided he had the naming of that official. When both 
these propositions were approved by Thornton, it was 
claimed that Biff’s status as a boxer was difficult to esti- 
mate fairly, as he had defeated few formidable antagon- 
ists and would be in better odofMf he set out to establish 
a reputation for himself instead of presuhiing to challenge 
the champion. 

Even the wily Crankshaw could extract nothing but 
promises from the champion’s camp, and these were de- 
signedly vague. Curtis was candidly uncertain about 
Biff’s right to combat for the title. Crankshaw was as 
candidly certain that Curtis would enter into no match 
wherein it was possible to' discern the slenderest shadow 
of danger. 

And while the negotiations flickered and sputtered 
and flared up again, with a petulant cry from the press 
and a prolonged howl from the public, Biff kept right on 
training, alternating between work and sleep with the 
monotony of a pendulum. 

“I won’t be caught napping, Tom,” he told his man- 
ager. “Once was enough for me. If this fellow Curtis 
can whip me he’ll have the satisfaction of defeating a 
man who was in' the finest possible condition of his entire 
fighting career.” 

“Which, makes me all the more anxious to force him 
to fight,” said Crankshaw. “For some reason or another, 
they’ve gotten terribly afraid of you all of a sudden. 
There must be some way of shaming them into a match.” 

“I’ll leave that part of it to you,” was Biff’s response. 
“I’ll be ready whenever you call on me.” 

Shortly after this conversation took place. Biff 
Thornton joined a theatrical company and made a trip 
through the mining regions, meeting all comers at every 
performance. Not the least decisive evidence of his 
ability was the fact that he did not quibble over the 


FOR GOOD MEASURE 


257 


( 


weights of his antagonists, . disposing; of light, welter and 
middle weight opponents with equal facility. 

With the sporting press and public calling clamorous- 
ly for Curtis to fight or abdicate the throne, Thornton- 
came to the end of his tour in Wyona, and was immedi- 
ately informed by his manager, Crankshaw, that he had 
been billed to box a “masked marvel.” 

“I didn’t want to take the masked one on at first,” 
explained Tom; “but I am given to understand that this 
fellow is a young swell of the town, and one of the best 
amateur boxers hereabouts. He is willing to pay for the 
privilege, and he is glad he is going to meet a gentleman 
in the ring.” 

* “You do the matching, Tom,” said Biff serenely, 
“and I’ll do what fighting there is to be done.” 

Wyona was wild with excitement over the affair, 
and on the night of the contest the biggest theater in the 
town was packed to the dome. , The law pemaitted only 
six rounds of boxing, but this was enough for the mask'ed 
marvel. The latter was a stockily built chap, with a 
rather long reach, and wore a black rubber cap that 
reached to his chin. There was something eerie in his 
appearance, but nothing awe-inspiring about his perform- 
ance. 

It was announced before the bout that tl^e masked 
marvel had never wielded the mitts against a professional 
boxer. It might have been announced with equal verity 
at the conclusion of the contest that he had never before 
received such a drubbing. 

Thornton hit him with ease and everything he had in 
the shop, and the “marvel” apparentely could not ward 
off the blows. 

“You are going to stay the limit,” Biff laughingly 
assured him. “I’m not an assassin.” 

“Thanks,” said the unknown, “but I’m going to do 
my best.” 

And he did. But during the latter rounds he did 
little more than bore in with his head down, swinging ill- ■’ 


258 


RING AND DIAMOND 


timed haymakers that never landed. When he tried to 
box, Thornton feinted him into knots, and then stood 
open and swapped punches with him. 

The exhibition convinced the audience that the only 
marvel in the ring was the unmasked Thornton. 

The press continued to pepper Champion Curtis with 
interrogative audacities, and he was fast becoming the 
despised butt of ridicule when he announced that he 
would fight the challenger “if the public insisted.” The 
public hadn't been doing anything else for many weeks, 
but that passed unnoticed, and articles for a fight for the 
championship of the world were signed at last. , 

“Biff,” said Crankshaw, “Curtis is telling folks that 
you are the yellowest stiff in the boxing game. He says 
he has called your bluff, and that he has turned down sev- 
eral propositions from you to frame the fight so that 
you’ll get the title and he’ll get the money.” 

^ “It’s a good thing he has a good digestion,” retorted 
Biff. “He is surely going to eat his own words when 1 
get him inside of a ring.” 

“You are confident of beating him. Biff? Don’t you 
think there is a chance for him and not a little danger for 
you?” 

“Well,” said Biff, deliberately, “in hunting tigers in 
a steel cage on top of an elephant, surrounded by a regi- 
ment of sharpshooters, a royal hunter runs a big chance, 
doesn’t he? About as much risk as you would run stick- 
ing your little finger in a tumbler of water. I’m takihg 
the same chance in meeting this Curtis.” 

“He is not the easiest thing in the world. Biff, but 
I’m glad you feel the way you do, for I know he has de- 
feated some men on his reputation alone. The best 
thing for you to do is to climb into the ring with the idea 
that you are a sure winner. 

“If I didn’t feel that way I wouldn’t want to fight 
him,” said Biff gravely. 

“You are going to be easy for him, I can see,” 
chuckled Crankshaw. “He’ll find that beating my boy 


FOR GOOD MEASURE 


259 


0 

is as easy as taking an egg away from a rattlesnake. 
Biff, I’ve handled both you boys, and I’m going to tell 
you right now that you are going to win because you de- 
serve to win. There’s as much difference between you 
two as there is between chalk and cheese. Curtis sees 
nothing to a boxing contest but the money, and the man 
who is audacious enough to challenge his supremacy is 
perforce an enemy. There is no room in his heart for 
clean sport; for the thrill and pride that comes from su- 
perior skill courageously demonstrated. He fights on 
brute instinct; to inflict punishment however he can, 
. needlessly if it serves his purpose ; when his stamina is 
gone, all is lost. He hasn’t any spiritual strength be- 
cause he hasn’t any conscientious scruples. He is a fight- 
ing machine, and pride cannot rescue him when his en- 
durance flags. The game blood he lacks is what you 
possess to an unusual degree.” 

“Tom,” said Thornton slowly, “I did not take up 
boxing because I delighted in punishing my fellow man, 
but because it was one branch of sport I chanced to be 
proficient in. I always liked to box, and always .will. 
When I dip my colors to a better man I’m ready to quit 
the game. Until then, I think I have a right to believe 
I can defeat anything near my weight and inches. I 
have felt what Scott says is ‘the stern joy that warriors 
feel in foemen worthy of their steel,’ and in boxing I ex- 
perience the utmost mental and physical activity. Other 
men may get the same feeling from playing baseball. I 
do not.” 

“Biff, did you ever see Kid Curtis?” 

“One or two photos of him, that’s all. And it's 
enough.” 

“Biff, what would you say if I were to tell you that 
they tried to put! something over on us in Wyona? What 
would you think if T were to tell you that the masked 
marvel was Kid Curtis himself?” 

Thornton looked at his manager with a curious 
smile. 


260 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I’d say I’m lightweight champion without fighting, 
Tom!” 

“So, you are, Biff, so you are ! But we’ll give them • 
another battle, won’t we, and toss in another licking for 
good measure !” 

The night of the big battle did not arrive too soon 
for Biff Thornton, and it found him with his sublime 
confidence intact. 

“Am I sure of defeating the champion?” he said to 
the newspaper men. “Say, boys, on the dead level, I wish 
you were all as sure of Paradise as I am of this light- 
weight crown!” 

They looked at him; and they nodded sagely one to 
the other. 

“He’s there!” they whispered. 

And Biff Thornton was there ! When the announcer 
had finished his unkempt orations, and the referee sent 
the men, with unintelligible instructions, to "their respec- 
tive comers to await the gong, Thornton walked springily, 
with the easy carriage of youthful muscles perfectly co- 
ordinated, his feet seeming to grip the ground as he 
walked. 

Blang! went the bell. 

Biff looked into Curtis’ frightened eyes and laughed. 

“Here’s your second licking, you fake champion,” he 
said. “Come in and fight, .for I’m going to knock you 
cold!” 

In came Curtis, furious, his arms fiailing. Biff, side- 
stepped, and his right fist sliced through the air as if 
hurled' from a 42-centimeter gun. Curtis staggered, fell 
against the ropes, threw out his amis wildly and grabbed 
Thornton around the neck, hanging on. 

Biff tried to pry himself loose, thep waited for the 
referee to separate them. When the official had per- 
formed his duty, Curtis reeled across the ring, both hands 
in position. Thornton, cool and collected, sprang after 
him and landed another sledge-hammer right on his jaw. 


FOR GOOD MEASURE 


261 


Curtis dropped to the floor, but rose at the count of seven. 
As he stood, swaying, in his comer, he raised his guard. 

Thornton darted at him, drawing back that terrible 
right. But instead of launching the blow, he looked at the 
referee, put his glove against the champion’s breast and 
gave him a slight push. ^Curtis crumpled up like a house 
of cards, and rolled ‘over on his back. The referee did 
not even start to count, but assisted the ex-champion’s 
seconds to carry him to his corner. 

Spectators stood on their seats, frantically cheering 
the new champion. Hats and newspapers were hurled 
into the air and the house was in an uproar. 

Crankshaw hustled Thornton to his dressing room, 
where he hugged and kissed Ifim in an excess of delight. 

‘Tt was great!” he cried “You, wouldn’t be de- 
nied — you were sure of him! But, Biff, he wasn’t the 
masked marvel. I only said that to give you additional 
confidence. But you believed it, didn’t you. I heard 
you tell him you were going to give him his second lick- 
ing when you started after him.” 

“And that’s what he got,” said Thornton, grinning 
amiably. “He took his first beating from me when he 
caught me out of condition that day on the road, for he 
was the tall hayseed who took a punch at me for bumping 
into him. Can you blame me for feeling like a champion 
after that?” 



Handled Without Gloves 


I was what you might call fascinated by the boxing 
game when I was a mere youngster, and the name of 
“Bud' McCloskey was known in the pugilistic world just 
as soon as I was big and strong enough to take care of 
myself. I never could imagine anything more really en- 
joyable than a mill with a man who could take and give 
without squealing, I guess I was great for the sport 
from the cradle, for I know that when I started in to 
scrap life seemed just one big, meaningless jumble. 

Each fight night at the old Eureka Club after I was 
about ten years old little Bud could be seen standing out- 
side asking every pug passing into the arena : “Let’s carry 
your grip, mister?” 

In this way I got to know all the glove-pushers and 
witnessed boxing-matches free; and as I grew older I got 
the opportunity to jump into the ring — not to box, but 
to swing a towel and rub the weary limbs of some of the 
performers. 

It was while I was playing second that I first ran 
across Mr. Sol Bippus, the English champion, and collect- 
ed the grouch that later sent me after the laurels of the 
Briton. 

Bippus was booked to box Young O'Brien one night, 
and I laid for the blooming blinker outside of the club 
and coaxed him to take me in. My cup of happiness 
■slopped over when he stripped for action and asked me to 
swing a towel for him. - 

Now, Champion Bippus had a rotten opinion of 
managers and seconds. He had a manager, Dan McCabe, 
a former boxer, but Dan cut a very small figure. Sol 


264 


RING AND DIAMOND 


could not appreciate the value of a mentor who was ready 
to 'divide his earnings in the ring. 

Hg claimed that if his fighting ability was worth so 
much money he was entitled to the lion’s share, and he 
believed he knew enough al^out the game to pick his an- 
tagonists. He had a high opinion of his own methods of 
milling. 

Besides yours respectfully, he had Brisk Gillen and 
Sparrow Golden in his corner — two wise birds^dn the art 
of the manly. Of course I wasn’t expected to ladle out 
any advice, but before the bout this _ was what Bippus 
said : 

“I don’t want any advice from you fellows. One 
of you just fan me and have the lemon-peel ready while 
the kid is rubbing my legs, and the other can sponge 
my face and neck. But that’s all. I’ll do the thinking 
for us all.” 

I’ve got to hand it to the bounder, he was some 
fighter. I believe that Young O’Brien, who was anything 
but a slob, complained to his handlers that Sol was 
hitting him with a shot-filled hose. Before the end of 
the third round Mr. O’Brien had taken all of the medi- 
cine his system would hold, and for the rest of the six- 
lound session he made any records that the first battle 
of Bull Run produced look like the funeral march of the 
^Crippl^d Consumptives’ Band. 

This was the night before Thanksgiving, I remem- 
' ber, for Billy Murphy, one of the best and squarest sport- 
ing-editors that ever boosted a boxer, said O’Brien did not 
attend services next day because he was averse to ap- 
proaching the Lord in a spirit of sarcasm. 

For six rounds I swung a towel and rubbed the Eng- 
lish champion, proud of the chance, but expecting a de- 
cent piece of change just the same. Sol slipped me a 
thin dime- — one large, juicy ten-cent piece, the tenth 
part of what I was usually paid by the preliminary boys. 

“Say, Bippus,” I says, “I thought the original tight- 
wad was the fellow that saved the tips of his shoe-laces 


HANDLED WITHOUT GLOVES 


265 


and sold them for old iron, but you put it all over him/^ 
Well, take it from me, I got everything that was 
coming to me, and then some. Mr. Bippus passed me a 
wallop in the nose that broke that section of my scenery, 
and cuffed me around his dressing-room until I dropped 
to the floor all but dead. He had things all his own way. 
I couldn’t have hit him then if I had tried, and Gillen and 
Golden had gone out as soon as they were paid off. 

It was a sweeping, unequivocal victory for the Eng- 
lish champion sure enough. Like the man trying to make 
an honest dollar, he hadn’t any competition. 

To take a punch at Sol Bippus at that stage of the 
game would have been too much like trying to wipe a 
lump of ice dry on a hot day, so I just assembles all my 
scattered parts and says meekly: “Some day, old top, I’m 
going to lick you within an inch of your life, and don’t 
you ever try to forget it.” 

Sol made some cracks about it being “quite too 
beastly impossible, don’t you know,” and I evaporated. 
Next morning Billy Murphy prints this in his paper: 

In the person of Sol Bippus, English 
champion, poverty faces the most energetic and 
unrelenting foe which it has ever encountered. 

Billy took a crack at the Briton because I told him 
about the ten-cent-tip 'business and the little reprimand 
that had been handed to me in the champion’s dressing- 
room. 

“I hope you’ll make good some day,” says Billy. 
“I’d like to see that cheap skate murdered in the ring.” 

“That’s just where I’m going to kill him, Mr. Mur- 
phy,” I says. “You can take it from me, there’s nothing 
going to give me the same pleasure that this job will, if I 
live to be the king of the bunch and earn a million bucks.” 

Well, I settled right down in earnest from that time 
on, and it wasn’t long before I was earning a nice obese 
livelihood with my mitts. And you can take it from me 
that I had to fight some to get the money, for in those 


266 


RING AND DIAMOND 


days you couldn’t haul down the long green as you can do 
it now. 

On the level, the prize-fighter’s job was not so soft. 
The modern fighter ought to pat himself on the back and 
accept his personal congratulations that he was not mix- 
ing it in those days. 

I know I would rather win a battle and not receive a 
cent than lose and receive hundreds. I was out to fight, 
and I was out to win, and I fought many a finish fight 
with skin-tight gloves for less money than the present- 
day pugs get for a six-round bout. 

There were just as many crooks in the game, J’ll 
admit, but they were not getting to quite as many of the 
scrappers as in the days that have dawned since I re- 
tired. 

I fought on the streets, in stables, on ferry-boats, in 
garrets — ^wherever there was a purse to be won by using 
the mitts I was^on the job. I had to keep busy; big 
purses were as rare as a good restaurant, and managers 
who fed you for talking through the sporting-pages were 
as hard to find as yesterday’s paper. 

I give it to you straight, I got my share of the fights, 
and, like Oliver Twist, asked for more. 

But while I was always ready to wipe up the circum- 
jacent real estate with anything in shoe-leather, as Billy 
Murphy put it, I never lost sight of the fact that my 
sole aim in life was to get a fight with Sol Bippus and 
kick the eternal sawdust out of him. 

I boxed the boxers and slugged with the sluggers, 
and there wasn’t a whole lot in the fight-game that wasn’t 
used on me at one time or another; and the best of it was, 
I was a guy who could learn a whole lot through the 
medium of a licking. 

I seldom let the same guy slaughter me twice in the 
same place, as you might say, and it got to be a saying 
that when Bud McCloskey dropped a fight he was a sure 
winner the second time out against the same opponent. 
The height of my ambition was to lick the English champ ; 


HANDLED WITHOUT GLOVES 


267 


and I prayed I might do it if I had afterward to resume 
my place in oblivion right away. 

Well, I was finally hooked up with Sol Bippus, but 
the best I could get was a ten-round no-decision affair. 
Can you imagine other pugs roasting me to a dark brown 
because of my luck? That’s what happened, though. 
After working hard every day, practicing always, fight- 
ing everything that came along, and taking some artistic 
trimmings, just as soon as I grabbed a bout with the 
champion they called me lucky. 

I guess I told you before that Bippus was as fast as 
a jack-rabbit within the roped arena and one of the 
trickiest pugilists that ever put on a mitt. Well, he 
hadn’t lost anything when I met him, and opportunities 
to slam him were as scarce as true charity between 
society ladies. 

Young O’Brien called him the Old Fox, and the name 
fitted him like a coat of paint, as you will agree when T 
hand you this account of our little argument, written by 
Billy Murphy: 

Young Bud McCloskey, a lad not yet nineteen years 
of age proved a Tartar to Champion Sol Bippus in a ten- 
round bout at the Eureka A. C. last night. . McCloskey 
fairly tied Bippus into knots with scientific boxing of a 
high order and easily outpointed the Englishman by a 
wide margin. 

It was the first time Bippus was outpointed in a local 
ring. In young McCloskey he found a "boxing enigma he 
was unable to solve. Bud was like a bounding ball on his 
feet and circled Bippus at all times, sending in smashing 
hooks, swings, uppercuts and back-hand punches till the 
English champion was wild with rage and totally bewil- 
dered by the avalanche of alien fists. 

McClo’skey’s defense was impregnable and Bippus in 
his rage hit him repeatedly on the neck and kidneys to 
force him to draw down his ^ard. The crowd hooted 
and booed the champion for this kind of fighting. 

Up to the eighth round there was nothing to it but 
McCloskey. Then the Englishman caught him by a trick. 
Along toward the end of the round, when Sol was feeling 
groggy from excessive punishment he had taken from the 
start, he grabbed McCloskey by the arms and shouted: 


268 


RING AND DIAMOND 


‘‘There’s the bell, Bud!” 

McCloskey instantly turned toward his comer. Bip- 
pus with a smile knocked him against the ropes with a 
right swing, and was on him like a tiger before he could 
recover his dazed senses. 

McCloskey stalled the round through, but the effects 
of the swing were lasting, and the balance of the fight 
was all the Englishman’s. 

In the ninth and tenth rounds Bippus was a whirl- 
wind. He sent punches into McCloskey from all angles 
by the aid of side-steps, shifts, and sudden lightning-like* 
dashes. 

In the final round he rocked McCloskey with right 
and left swings and made him cover up and hold on for 
dear life. The bell unquestionably saved Bud from a 
knockout. 

Both boys tipped the beam at less than 133 pounds 
ringside. 

Some of the sporting-writers gave the fight to Bip- 
pus because he wore the belt.Take it from me, the fellow 
who fights a champ is always at a disadvantage. Writers, 
and even referees, lean toward a title-holder. 

You may really beat a champion, outpoint him and 
everything, but in the great majority of cases you will 
get nothing better than a draw, if you get that. Any 
referee will hesitate about taking away a title, so almost 
the only way to get the verdict is to knock the champion 
cold. 

Of course I was ashamed of myself for letting the 
Briton maul me through a trick, but some wise guy once 
said experience is a great teacher, and I was glad I stayed 
the limit because it meant that I would have another bout 
with him. 

“That’s two beatings you owe me,” says Bippus to 
me, after it’s over. “If they have you on with me again, 
old soldier, you’ll owe me three.” 

' “I’ll pay my debt, Mr. Bippus,” says I. “I guess 
you didn’t find this last discussion quite as easy as the 
dressing-room affair.” 

“Not quite,” he says; “but I’ll make the next session 
your farewell* appearance in any ring.” 


HANDLED WITHOUT GLOVES 


Strangely enough, a good portion of the fight-fans 
and critics thought I stood no more chance with Bippus 
than snowflakes before the sun, and did not hesitate to 
say so. Naturally this did not get me anything, for when 
I asked for another try at the champ, the Eureka man- 
agement grinned and said they couldn’t afford to pay a 
consistent loser. 

“We can put you on for the picture-money,” they 
told me, and then proceeded to explain that a moving- 
picture concern which desired pictures of the English 
champion in action might be induced to let me have 
twenty-five or fifty dollars. The Eureka management 
had to pay Bippus too much money for his appearance to 
add anything to this, so I was told to take it or leave it. 
I took it, so the match was made for ten rounds. 

I hurried off to Billy Murphy with the news. — 

“Bud,” says Billy sadly, “they’ve pulled one across 
on you, or my name is Sweeney. The only time Sol 
Bippus ever fought before a moving-picture machine was 
when he met ‘Dutch’ Wick. He loves to pose — just 
loves it — so he didn’t put Wick away in the early part of 
the fight, as he could have easy enough, but just let things 
drag along until Wick got his strength back. Then with 
Bippus carelessly posing for the pictures Dutch cams 
across with a knockout. After that Sol swore he’d never 
fight for the films again.” 

“But there’ll be lots of money in it for him, Billy,” 
I says; “and you know what a high regard he has for the 
current coin of the realm.” 

“Even so,” says I; “but I can^t believe there’s a 
chance of him standing for the film company getting in 
on it. I think they’ve got you signed up to fight for 
nothing when the time ^omes.” 

And Billy was right. A tall, sallow-complexioned 
gent by the name of Mark Nubin came to me in my dress- 
ing-room on the night of the fight and ^sked me if I had 
any objections to fighting before the movie camera. 


270 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“None in the world/’ says I, “seeing I’m not getting 
a four-cent piece anywhere else.” 

“I am sorry for you, young feller, ”he says, “but Bip- 
pus has made a monkey out of you and out of me. He 
didn’t say anything until tonight. Then, after I’d got 
here with my machine to take the pictures, he told me 
flat that he wouldn’t fight for the films. 

“I’m Mark Nubin, president of the Nubin Film Com- 
pany, and I increased my offer of three hundred to six 
hundred dollars; but I couldn’t reach him. When I asked 
him why he wouldn’t stand for the camera he called me 
names that a bucko mate wouldn’t use on a deaf paralytic. 

“He seems to think he’s the kind of champion that 
comes in a case by himself, packed in cotton and in- 
voiced separately. I asked him to name his figure, and 
he only cursed me the more. Now we will only take 
outside pictures of the crowd and Bippus after the fight’s 
over.” 

“Mr. Nubin,” I says, “it’s not money but conceit 
that prevents him from giving his classic postures to the 
movies. And he may get a little bliss out of the fact 
that I agreed to go into this thing for the picture-money.” 

“Well,” says Mr. Nubin, “I didn’t know they had tied 
you up like that; but I’ll tell you what I’ll do: You lick 
Sol Bippus and I’ll give you that fifty dollars just the 
same as if we took the pictures.” 

^ I couldn’t wait till I got that Englishman into the 
ring after that; and the opening bell was as welcome to 
me as hot soup on a cold day. I started off feinting, jab- 
bing, and blocking, and I wasn’t taking the chances of a 
tinhorn gambler with loaded dice. 

“You’re a pretty husky young chap,” says Bippus, 
starting in to josh me; “but a real champion has to have 
brains as well as brawn.” 

“Well,” I comes back at him, “some champions are 
getting along with so little of either I still have hopes.” 

“Your hopes may Bud, they won’t ever blossom,” he 


•says. 


handled without gloves 


2 ?! 


You see, he thought he had quite a delicate wit. 
Sickly I called it. 

“You’d better play close to the cushion,” he teased. 
“You’re a fair boxer.” 

“Passing fair,” I declared, jabbing him in the 
mouth, “passing fair. And others I know are already 
past. Get me?” And I shook him up with a nice right 
upper-cut that brought the tears to his eyes. 

“Don’t spoil my beauty,” he says. “This is the only 
face I got.” 

“Sol,” says I, “you’re mighty near out of face. It’s 
a good thing you turned down the Nubin picture-people. 
I’m out here fighting for nothing — just to beat you into a 
jelly.” 

“From the way you’re peckin’ at me,” says he, “I 
should say you don’t hold spite.” 

Well, we took things so easy in the opening chapters 
tJiat the crowd started to hiss and shout “Fake!” In 
the fifth round I took the bit in my teeth at the outset, 
and inside of two minutes I had battered Sol’s face 
almost to a pulp. My rapid-fire right and left facers, de- 
livered at short range, seldom went wrong, and when the 
round was over I seemed to have a pretty fair chance of 
winning. 

Toward the close of the sixth round Sol inflicted con- 
siderable body-punishment that rather slowed me up; but 
I was merrily pegging away at him in the seventh. He 
tried several tricks, thinking to catch me napping, but he 
soon found I was wide awake and watching with happy 
interest all that was going on around me. 

Over and over again I watched for indications of a 
left lead and scored in advance of him, and when I stood 
away and boxed him he was apparently all at sea. But 
he was steady as a rock — under punishment and seemed 
to pin his faith to a right-hand body-punch. 

Time after time, after being worsted in heart-break- 
ing rallies that carried us from one end of the ring to the 
other, he would reach my body with right and left smash- 


272 


RING AND DIAMOND 




es, the impact of which was heard in the farthest comers 
of the arena. Try as I would, I could not escape these 
onslaughts, although I laughed at him and told him he 
wasn’t hurtjng me a little hit. 

“You’ll feel ’em after a while,” he says, smiling as 
best he could with his puffed face and split lips. 

“I’m having the time of my life,” I tells him, peck- 
• ihg his phiz to pieces all the while. 

His big, blond face was gashed and bruised; his lips 
were tom, and his nostrils filled with blood. His pro- 
truding chin glistened ’ with the gore that welled over his 
lips, but he kept winking in a joshing manner^ at his sec- 
onds who were dancing around and yelling like Com- ' 
manches. 

At the end of the ninth round Sol pulls his rally. He 
ripped in a blow that seemed to take my last breath and 
go through my stomach like a bayonet; and as I stood, 
open-mouthed, dazed for the time being, he clipped me 
on the jaw with his right, the first punch he had landed 
above the shoulders for several rounds. 

Down I goes to my knees, and when I came up with- 
out taking the count he was on top of me like a thousand 
of brick. Fightipg like a tiger, he began to volley with 
both gloves. My head was tilting and jerking under the 
impact of the plunging lefts or rasping rights, and Sol 
was going with lightning speed and hitting at the right 
time when the bell rang. It sure was some sweet music 
to me. 

I guess I’ll have to let Billy Murphy tell you the rest 
of it : 

The last round resolved itself into a question of the 
survival of the fittest. Science was forgotten. The 
fighters battled all around the ring, head to head, shoul- 
der to shoulder, and slugged away as though the fight had 
just began, with the referee frantically trying to pull 
them apart. 

When Bippus staggered to the corner of the ring for 
the beginning of the tenth round his only nope of winning 
lay in a knockout punch. He had been whipped decisive- 


HANDLED WITHOUT GLOVES 


273 


ly during the last nine rounds, but his wonderful recuper- 
ative powers brought him up in almost as good condition 
as McCloskey, who was weak and unsteady from the 
terrific pace he had set and the grueling work of the 
ninth round. 

Both men swung in one blind blow after another as 
they charged each other around the ring, with first one 
and then the other doing the chasing. McCloskey dropped 
the Englishman after a minute of fierce fighting, but 
when Bippus got up he ran into a clinch. 

Bud shook him off, but was in no condition to take 
advantage of the situation. On the neck, chest, and 
arms Mac showered useless punches, with Bippus clinch- 
ing and holding on to save himself. 

Suddenly Bippus let fly a haymaker that caught 
McCloskey on the point of the jaw and laid him back over 
the ropes in his own corner. With his arms hanging to 
his sides, knees bending under him and a blind stare in 
his eyes, the Yankee was at the mercy of his foe. 

Dazed by the punishment he had taken and crazed • 
by the thought of a possible victory, Bippus squinted 
through swollen eyes and shook his bloody gloves in an 
uncertain manner as though trying to decide which of the 
nineteen McCloskeys he would attack. He swayed for- 
ward with a right swing, and the bewildered and battle- 
worn McCloskey slipped to the floor. , 

Slowly Bud got up^ He reeled, his legs quivering 
under him, his head wabbling from side to side like a man 
with palsy. * He forgot all about putting his hands up to 
his face to protect it, just as he overlooked the chance to 
remain on the floor and take the count. 

Bippus, tottering on two legs that were scarcely able 
to bear his own weight, managed to drive home another 
right to the jaw. McCloskey fell in a heap, his arms, 
legs, and muscles twitching convulsively. 

After many efforts he finally pushed himself to his 
hands and knees. Nobody thought he would rise, but by 
a supreme effort he got up on to one knee. 

Just as his hands left the floor he lost all power in his 
legs, his brain became numb and he rolled over to the 
floor of the ring, helpless and dead to the 'world. 

I came to my senses in a few seconds, and in five 
minutes was as well as ever. Trying to dodge out of the 
rear entrance of the club, I bumped square into Bippus 
bowing, bareheaded, to a wildly cheering throng. 


274 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“You’re the cheapest guy in the business,” he says. 
“You took an awful licking for nothing.” 

You can well imagine I wasn’t feeling too much like* 
joshing with him. I tried to get away without any more 
talk, hut he was feeling too good to let me beat it just 
then. 

“I says,” he sneers at me, blocking my way, “I says 
you’re cheap and your revenge is a long time coming. 
You ain’t got any spite in you. And I think you’re yel- 
low — I’ll bet you went out to avoid punishment.” 

Can you picture it? Taking an unholy beating — - 
and giving one, too — and then being called a quitter by a 
man you had missed sending into dreamland only by a 
hair-line margin? 

The blood shot through me like red-hot arrows; be- 
fore I realized what I was doing I hit Mr. Bippus a whack 
on the ear. A left hook sent him down on the pavement, 
and after that he was busy getting up. 

There was no bell to save him, no minute rests in 
which to recuperate, and my bare knuckles found him an 
easy mark. What I couldn’t accomplish in twenty rounds 
with the gloves I completed in less than two minutes of 
rough-and-tumble stuff. 

I cleaned off the sidewalk with Mr. Sol Bippus and 
tossed him into the street, the worst licked champion that 
ever drew breath. 

They carried him back to his dressing-room again, 
but as I stepped aside for them to pass he raised his 
head feebly and spoke : 

“You’re chock full of spite, but you’re cheap!” 

And I was inclined to* agree with him until the next 
morning, when I received a visit from Mr. Nubim, of the 
Nubim Film Company. 

“McCloskey,” he said, handing me an envelope, 
“here’s my check for six hundred dollars. You earned 
every cent of it. The battle in the ring wasn’t a circum- 
stance to the one on the outside, and I’m handing you the 
champion’s end of the picture-money.” 


HANDLED WITHOUT GLOVES 


275 


“Gee, Mr. Nubim!" I says, still bewildered, “you 
must have got a lot of satisfaction out of that street- 
fight !’» 

“I did,” he ©ays, slamming me on the back. “But 
I’ll get something more than that, Bud. It was the out- 
side affair we took pictures of!” 



Oblivion For One 


With your first look at'O^ara Brett it was difficult 
to resist the conviction that he was a man of head-fore- 
most courage and pugnacious spirit. He was over six 
feet in height, built like a box car and possessed the 
strength of three ordinary men. He should have been 
able to uproot a regiment of growing white hopes, ^ and 
make joyous the heart of the peripatetic pugilistic mana- 
ger seeking gentlemen of -eloquent muscles and undiscov- 
ered chins. But alas and alack, and likewise sad to 
record, O’Mara Brett, for all his bulk and perfection of 
physique, owned the heart of a jack-rabbit. 

At Swayne Junction, where he was helper to an air- 
brake inspector by the name of Kenny, Mr. Brett was 
held in fathomless contempt as a man whom nobody could 
respect. From wiper to car tink, the men walked over 
him roughshod and laughed to see him unmurmuringly 
perform half their allotted tasks, the while they made 
audible, cruel insinuations, which he declined to note in 
any way. More than one slovenly worker with a belli- 
cose tilt to his chin, and a purely platonic love for labor, 
thanked his stars that 0 ’Mara's pipe of peace was kept 
alight by the coal of ^ cowardice. They had as much 
trouble exacting obedience from him as a kitten 
has putting away a double order of milk. For good 
measure, they called him every name that carried dis- 
'grace or disrespect along with it, and were never happier 
than when some fresh and especially choice adjective 
reached their collective memory. 

O’Mara was shy and spiritless, and he toiled inces- 
santly, while the varied activities of his workaday world 


278 RING AND DIAMOND 

swept past and left him isolated. Sometimes he was per- 
mitted to buy theatre or prize drawing tickets, and again 
he would be graciously allowed to furnish chewing and 
smoking tobacco to his fellows; but he always ate alone 
except when somebody had been tampering with his din- 
ner bucket and the gang was tipped off to expect some 
fun. One day, when he had tamely submitted to having 
his ham sandwiches converted into inedible conglomera- 
tions of tar, waste and sawdust, and apologetically ac- 
cepted a punch in the nose^from “Skinny” Lingerman for 
daring to talk back, Frank Kenny, his boss, turned upon 
him with unaccustomed fury. 

“The next time anybody hits you, you big dub,” 
stormed Kenny, “you will either fight back or look for 
another jo'b. Taking a crack in the map from Lingerman 
is the limit! Don’t you know you could kill any one of 
us fellows if you got up the guts? Don’t let me see any 
more of this stuff being pulled off around here, that’s all 
I want to say.” 

Going home that night O’Mara caught up with Frank 
Kenny and asked permission to walk with him. 

“Why shouldn’t you walk with me?” snorted Kenny. 
“You’re big enough to walk with anybody you choose.” 

“I don^t want you to go and be mad with me, 
Frank,” said Brett. “I am a big slob of a man, that I 
don’t deny; but I do my work as well as any man could, 
and because I am not of a quarrelsome mind I don’t want 
you to hold it against me. Will you, now, please, 
Frank?” 

Kenny stopped before the door of his two-story cot- 
tage, three hundred dollars down and the balance to be 
paid in rent. Revulsion seized him harshly. 

Brett, you make me sick! Not of a quarrelsome 
mind! You are without the pluck of a cornered mouse, 
you dub.^ Look at me. I’m a child alongside you, but 
there isn’t a man in the employ of the R. & P. at the 
Junction who can take liberties with my lunch. And look 
at you! Bigger than ‘Fireman’ Carl Quinn, the new 


OBLIVION FOR ONE 


2t9 


white hope, and taking a punch in the nose from Skinny 
Lingerman, who’s one hundred and forty- five pounds of 
brag and bluster !” 

- “But Fm not a fighting man, Frank. You used to 
box hereabouts, Fve heard tell, and you know the ways of 
the gloves, which I don’t!” 

“Then come inside the house and take your first 
lesson!” cried Kenny. “Fll show you all I know, al- 
though you don’t need it with your build and strength. 
You’re not a fighting man, you say. Well, that isn’t 
what I’m kicking about. The plain truth is, O’Mara, 
you’re not any kind of a man !” 

O’Mara took out his handkerchief and blew his nose 
loudly, thoroughly. 

“Maybe, Frank, you’re alongside the truth of the 
matter,” he said, jerkiy. “I guess I’m ont, as y^ou are 
after saying nor any kind of a man.” 

Tears sprang into his eyes and gave them the soft 
radiance of a child’s. Kenny’s exasperation increased 
rather than lessened. 

“Don’t cry, you ninny!” he prodded. “Would a man 
cry? Listen to me with all your ears: you’re going to 
take supper with me tonight, and after the wife goes off 
to the movies with the kids, you and I will go down into 
the cellar and put the gloves on for a little while. Oh, 
yes, you will come. Here’s the wife at the door now. 
Maggie, this is O’Mara Brett, the big stiff you’ve heard 
me speak of so often. Not very polite? Well, nobody 
is — to O’Mara!” 

Every night for a week O’Mara Brett received in- 
structions from the competent Kenny. The latter grad- 
ually became convinced that the big man’s yellow streak 
did not cover the entire area of his back, for he slugged 
him with might and main and no sign of mercy. At first 
O’Mara shivered like a gun-shy collie at a turkey shoot, 
but when his pulse got back to its normal pitch it seemed 
as if he couldn’t get enough. “What blow can you knock 
me out with?” he wanted to know. Kenny said there 


280 


RING AND DIAMOND 


was no blow in his repertoire that would do the trick; he 
had tried them all, and could only suggest the efficacy of 
a blow on the head with an ax or swallowing an ounce of 
cyanide every half hour. Still O’Mara was always em- 
barrassed by the now familiar necessity of punching a 
man to avoid being punched. 

Sphinx-like and harmless as ever, O’Mara went about 
his daily labors with the same humble mien. He felt 
better physically, but he was not a little perturbed men- 
tally. 

One afternoon Klober, the big German “brakey” on 
the Erie shifting engine, profanely demanded of O’Mara 
the precise Whereabouts of a missing lantern. As a me- 
dium through which to acquire information Mr. Brett 
left much to be desired. To him civility seemed to have 
become an abhorrent thing. Erom soup to nuts, he was 
indifferent, even insolent. He fervently hoped one Klo- 
ber would go to the infernal regions just to oblige a cer- 
tain over-worked, long-suffering employee of the R. & P., 
who was at that moment within hailing distance of 
Swayne Junction. 

By way of reply, Mr. Klo'ber painstakingly analyzed 
the shortcomings of O’Mara’s immediate relatives, and 
was beginning on his grandparents, when he was trans- 
formed into the dazed recipient of a smash on the jaw to 
which his ultimate posterity must attribute a facial lop- 
sidedness. 

Amazement and indignation shone in the faces of the 
spectators of this scene, and several hulking figures 
moved threateningly toward 0’Mara,who held his clenched 
fists awkwardly in front of him and che<ved his upper lip. 
His eyes for a moment were strangely lit, and something 
had come into his face which his old tormentors did not 
understand. All the time he was acutely conscious of a 
mad desire to flee. 

, Frank Kenny took occasion to observe that O’Mara 
Brett had a punch that was instantaneously fatal to ani- 
mal life, and that when it came -to heart he was there 






OI^LIVION FOR ONE 


281 


'with a stack of red chips. He also remarked that he was 
totally unaccustomed to permitting himself to stand by 
and see a mob attack one man. It w^s indisputably 
none of his concern, but he felt something warm flood his 
brain and he knew subconsciously that his temper was 
about to take charge of him. The belligerent friends of 
the vanquished brakeman forced an uncomfortable laugh, 
and agreed that they had been rattled by Brett's unex- 
pected revelation of elemental manliness. 

Thus did O'Mara suddenly burst from obscurity and 
disapprobation; and elbow his way into the limelight. 
Realizing necessity drove, he called down the hard men 
as they came along, and not a peep of defiance or disre- 
spect came from the procession. He condescended to 
shake Skinny Lingerman by the hand and confide to him 
that the only time he ever hit a man with all his might 
he had made of himself a fugitive from 'justice, being 
judged guilty of manslaughter by a jury of the deceased 
man’s friends. Yeoman service had latterly been ren- 
dered him by Frank Kenny, and now the matter was 
squashed. Kenny stood by while he retailed this story, 
and was obviously laughing internally, though he did not 
take the trouble to prevent the spread of the little fiction. 

It was only the usual white lie 'Cut from the conven- 
tional bolt, 6ut it brought unforseen complications in its 
train. The men of Swayne Junction began to clamor for 
a fight between O’Mara Brett and Salvatore Malatesta, 
the Italian champion of Cumberland Station, whose proud 
boast was that the only man in the service of the R. & P. 
Railroad to whom he doffed his hat was the celebrated 
Fireman Carl Quinn, the first bona fide white hope to 
appear on the pugilistic horizon who commanded the re- 
spect of the critics. Through sheer force of habit, the 
men of Swayne Junction disregarded O’Mara entirely. 
They asked Kenny if his man-eating pupil wouldn’t 
annihilate “The Wonderful Wop” and uphold th4 honor 
of Swayne, and were told to go ahead and complete their 
negotiations with Mr. Malatesta and his friends. 


282 


RING And diamond 


From a heaven of cheerful content O’Mara was 
yanked toothe consideration of the details of an unwel- 
come combat with a man whom he had never seen, and 
who had never done him an injury. 

“Now, hear me say this, Frank,” said O’Mara; “and 
tell the boys just how it is. I don’t want to fight this 
poor dago fellow at all, because I’ll tell you, man dear. 
I’m not of the cut of a professional pug.^ I’ve got to 
hate a man good and hard, or the man must do nie a great 
unjust, before I have it in me to beat him up. Let this 
poor Italian man go his way in peace. I’ll not run the 
risk of killing him.” ** 

Kenny’s temper strained at the leash. 

“Are you going to fight?” he asked, and O’Mara’s 
“No!” came like a saber cut. His keen eyes searched the 
big man’s almost plaintively. The conviction came that 
0 ’Mara was really deficient in red corpuscles. As 
George Moore said of art, he lacked guts. 

“O’Mara,” said Kenny, in a ominously tense tone, 
“if you don’t fight Malatesta you’ve got to lick me right in 
the yard at Swayne.” 

O’Mara’s lips twitched and his face was drawn with 
distress. 

“You don’t understand me, Frank. I have not what 
Skinny Lingerman calls the fighting instinct, d’ye see 
now; which is, I don’t like to fight just to be beating the 
head off a man at all, at all. Mind now, I don’t say that 
the fight I had with Dutch Klober didn’t do me any good, 
for it did, and a lot, too. Before I broke the jaw of him 
I was as popular with the boys as a flea is with a dog, 
and now they treat me with respect, they do, and my 
work is twice as easy, and I love the boys, every blessed 
one of them.” 

Kenny was reflective for a moment. 

“What will the boys think of you if you run out of 
this match with Malatesta? Do you think they’ll con- 
tinue to treat you with respect?” 


OBLIVION FOR ONE 


283 


O’Mara regarded his friend with a hopelessness but 
one degree removed from desperation. And he was 
strangely tongue-tied. He found nothing to say until 
after a phuse that verged on awkwardness. 

“They’ll think—” he began. 

“They’ll think you’re a quitter, and before you know 
it Skinny Lingerman will be punching you in the nose 
again when you , object to tar and slop in your dinner 
pail!” 

An oath cracked in 0 ’Mara’s throat — and was 
swallowed. 

“I can never stand a bit of that hell again,” he said 
hotly. “I’ll quit and run away first.” 

“That’s what you’d better do,” Kenny agreed, with 
the resigned expression of a man that humors a spoiled 
child. “But I’ll tell you right now that when Fireman 
Carl Quinn stops off here next Saturday afternoon, on his 
way West to fight for the championship of the world, 
you’d better stay in bed. The boys might want you to 
put the gloves on with him 1” 

Kenny concluded that it was as much a waste of 
energy to talk fight to O’Mara as it is to talk sound to 
the deaf, and consequently gave up trying. The follow- 
ing day the big man did not report for work; and for 
three days he was absent without leave. 

Then Saturday came, and with it O’Mara Brett. 
The latter’s cool- silence was simply beyond the power of 
adjectives, and when Kenny asked him if he intended 
donning the mitts with Carl Quinn the big man con- 
signed him to an unreasonably warm place which has as 
many synonyms as an octopus has tenacles. 

Kenny was not a profound analyst, yet his instinctive 
shrewdness told him that there was something in the wind. 

“See here, O’Mara,” he said, “I haven’t told any one 
yet that you said you would not fight Malatesta and the 
boys think you’ve been sick. You have a chance to make 
good, you know. How about things, old man? Changed 
your mind, haven’t you?” 


284 


RING AND DIAMOND 


'‘I have not/’ said O’Mara. 

Frank Kenny drew back his arm, his fist clenched. 
The impulse to drive it into O’Hara’s face was overpow- 
ering. He turned abruptly on his heel and made no 
reply. 

O’Hara, unseen by any one, crawled into an empty 
feed car on the siding, gave a wail of despair, buried his 
face in his hands and cried like a baby. 

It was almost an hour later when he reappeared, and 
the first person he bumped into was Skinny Lii\german. 

“Carl “Quinn’s just got in!” cried Skinny. “Hear ~ 
them cheering him down there — hear ’em? His train 
pulls out in twenty minutes. Hurry up or you’ll miss 
him !” 

“No, I won’t miss him.” 

“Are you going to box him?” shrilled Skinny in high 
admiration. 

“I’m going to knock his head off!” declared O’Hara. 

Skinny gasped and gave an unsteady laugh. To him 
it seemed in the nature of a blasphemy that a sentient 
fellow creature — and of all men the one he had punched 
in the nose! — should attempt to speak disrespectfully of 
Fireman Carl Quinn. 

“Don’t let him hear you say that!” he warned 
O’Hara. “He’d punch you into a jelly!” 

“Don’t you ever think there’s a man alive that can 
do that,” said O’Hara Brett sternly. “I’m telling you 
confidential-like that I’m afraid to hit any man all my 
might. I don’t want to fight, but I have a mind now to 
prove once and for all that I can fight, just to win the 
peace the soul of me craves. Hy strength is too great. 
Skinny, for the fighting game, and I would be killing my 
opponents in the public gaze. If I kill this man Quinn 
the blood be on the heads of the men who have been in- 
sisting on seeing me fight, and God have mercy on them 
and him — I mean Quinn. Now, show me where he is!” 

Fireman Carl Quinn, surrounded by admiring hun- 
dreds, stood chatting with a group of bosses when O’Hara 


285 


/ 

OBLIVION FOR ONE 

Brett pushed his way to his side. Big of frame and sur- 
charged with vitality, he could be termendously genial or 
tremendously wrathful in the quick blaze of his temper- 
ament. He had an eager, almost explosive manner of 
talking and the sublime confidence of a pugilist who has 
never been soothed into a state of coma with a soporific 
punch. 

“Mr. Quinn,” said O’Mara without preamble, “I am 
what they call a man without fighting instinct, but I want 
to show these men once and for all that I can fight when 
I want to. Will you give me a bit of rough-and-tumble 
fracas right here, sir?” 

As his vision comprehended O’Mara Brett, Fireman 
Carl Quinn’s smile gave place to a frown. 

“Who are you?” he snapped. “I’m not a street 
fighter, whatever you are, but if you don’t get out of the 
way I’ll get a notion to slap your jowls.” ^ 

“Slap away,” said O’Mara, as he backed off and fell 
into a pugilistic attitude. As the words left his mouth 
it was immediately closed by a lightning left jab, and 
then the two men went into a clinch. O’Mara was 
strong enough, but his strength was the slow, resistless 
power of the traction engine; while Quinn was quick with 
the flashing, wicked strength of the racing car. 

The next span of sixty seconds or so was shrewdly 
interesting, but it was too densely crowded with action to 
lend itself to intelligible description. Of a sudden there 
was a popping report, as if someone had opened a cham- 
pagne bottle, and Carl Quinn spread-eagled on the 
ground, dead to the world. A right hook to the jaw 
made him exhibit a large unconcern in things mundane 
for the next thirty seconds. 

Stunned silence was followed by frenzied cheers as 
those demented railroaders rushed at O’Mara Brett and 
bore him aloft on their shoulders. 

Fireman Carl Quinn climbed aboard his car. There 
was a sigh of air from the brakes; the train began to 


i 


286 


RING AND DIAMOND 


move. Cheers filled the air, but they were all for O’Mara 
Brett. Mr. Quinn smiled wistfully. 

The following Saturday night brought the result of 
Fireman Carl Quinn’s battle with the world’s champion 
out of the West. He had won a hard-fought contest by 
a knock-out in the tenth round. Railroad men every- 
where went wild with delight, but the men at Swayne 
Junction became raving maniacs. They rubbed shoul- 
ders and broke bread with the man who had knocked out 
the champion 6i the world! 

In his training quarters near the. scene of the great 
battle Champion Carl. Quinn, one torrid afternoon about 
a week later, sat reading a. letter, the last paragraph of 
which ran as follows; 

I am trusting to you, sir, never to reveal that I saw 
you before you stopped off to see us boys, -or that I signed 
over my savings bank account to you for faking that 
knockout in the tussle we had at Swayne Junction. It was 
worth every cent of the five hundred dollars; ! had in 
bank, too, and it was great kindness for you to take pity 
on a peaceable yap like me, but if you want any more 
money I will pay you so much a month, whatever you say. 
I may have lost my head entirely when we had our muss, 
but I know for certain that none of my blows could have 
hurt the champion of the world a whole lot. I guess I 
needn’t tell you that the dago doesn’t want to fight me 
now, and neither does anybody else around Swayne 
Junction. Yours truly, 

O’MARA BRETT. 

Mr. Quinn heaved a deep sigh of relief. *T thought 
it was a challenge at first,” he mused. “Wonder what 
he’d do if he knew the knockout wasn’t fa'ked?” 


<0 


/ 


Framed For the Ninth 

D 


Mute Hegarty, retired heavyweight champion, wa» 
not so called because he was deaf and dumb, but because 
of his almost invulnerable tactiturnity. The fact of the 
matter was. Mute stammered when he essayed even mon- 
osyllabic speech and being keenly sensitive about his vo- 
cal eccentricities, talked only- at the prompting of 
necessity. Thousands had a bowing acquaintance with 
him. His speaking friendship was limited to his old 
manager, “Ace” McCartney, and the members of his own 
family. When he uttered more than half a dozen words 
at a time he was on a conversational debauch. 

But if Mute did not talk, the same wasn’t true of his 
money, which was loquacious enough to suit even a hotel 
proprietor. To Mr. Hegarty spending money was a bus- 
iness in which long experience had rendered him ^thor- 
oughly proficient. He was forever making several 
varieties of a picturesque idiot of himself. And yet his 
silences were sometimes more informing than anothet 
man’s conversation. 

Mute took into retirement with him a fortune vari^ 
ously estimated at from $200,000 to $400,000 and the 
reputation of being the undefeated champion of the 
world. In the eager and salad days of his youth he had 
never fought for a guarantee of less than $20,000 and 
40 per cent, of the gate receipts. Of such a sum he 
would “soak” a third and “blow” the remainder, heedless 
of the scriptural injunction “Let him that standeth take 
heed lest he fall.” In the ring Mute was never known 
to fall; but his falls from grace and the water wagon 
occurred with painful frequency. However, in spite of 


288 RING AND DIAMOND 

his spendthrift ways, he possessed a goodly stock of that 
excellent commodity known as common sense, and had 
just enough s.entiment in him to keep him on the sunnier 
side of cynicism. He understood that that part of the 
populace that follows with any interest the doubtful for- 
tunes of the prize ring would easily adjust itself to the 
presence of a new champion, and he had no idea of being 
the pitcher that was carried to the well once too often. 
The world was full of broken, and battered idols of the 
Squared circle, with hardly one of their former admirers 
to do them honor; they were as common a sight as pink 
giraffes in delirium tremens. Viewing a similar conclu- 
sion to his own career with extreme disfavor. Mute He- 
garty grabbed his money and backed into retirement. 

Four years of idleness, reinforced by a keen appetite 
for very best of the good things of life, brought the great 
Hegarty to a realization that no fortune is too large to 
spend, and that a man wihout an income has no license 
for believing that a few hundred thousand will see him 
through Folly’s realm to comfortable old age. So one 
day he received a statement from his bankers that 'was 
amazing; and made him doleful and blasphemous. His 
fast dwindling fortune had shrunk to a bare $2,000 and 
his days as a luxurious liver were at an end. 

He stood staring at the statement that brought him 
to the brink of bankruptcy with an expression of absolute 
and paralyzed incredulity. 

“H-h-h-hell!” he gasped, and dropped into a chair 
with an icy moisture beading his brow. That he was 
called the undefeated champion was a treasurable compli- 
ment; he had never meant to jeopardize the title; but he 
had reached the frayed end of his tether. He would 
have to fight again ; and he had an uncomfortable sense 
that he could not get another battle unless he agreed to 
lose. 

Mute walked his apartment in the St. Regal with^ 
thoughtful mien, as one reviewing and arranging a con- 
fused mass of facts. He had the burgundy complexion 


FRAMED FOR THE NINTH 


of a bon vivant, a special detestation for exercise and an 
unshakable feeling of apprehension. On the verge of 
succumbing to complete mental panic he telegraphed for 
Ace McCartney, who appeared upon the scene within the 
hour. 

McCartney was reluctantly eager to reassume the 
position of devoted adviser of Mr. Hegarty, not for per- 
sonal gain, but for the sake of auld lang syne. He was 
dark, fat, podgy, affable and self-contained. His voice 
was pleasant and distinct, and the style and texture of his 
clothing stamped him as something of a swell. 

Mute, red from chin to ears, stammered forth his 
story. 

“And,” he wound up with a rush, “w-w-with you 
t-t-to hel-help m-m-me, I-I-I k-k-kin lick ’em aw-aw-all!” 

When Ace McCartney spoke is was as an elder might 
speak to a child — instructively, with a hint, indeed, of 
authority. 

“You’re very bad. Mute,” he said, “and you couldn’t 
fight a preliminary right now. It’ll take some time to put 
you in anything like decent condition. What did you do 
with all your money?” 

Instead of trying to put a gloss upon the matter. 
Mute became satirical. He had earned all the money 
he had taken with him into the semi-obscurity of his re- 
tirement, he declared, and he went on to state that he had 
spent it like a white man and a sport. Sure, he was 
broke — perilousyl near it, anyhow. He couldn’t live on 
a couple of bucks a week, he couldn’t, and he couldn’t 
make more money without using his fists; he hadn’t dis- 
covered the secret of the transmutation of metals; he 
hadn’t developed a formula for extracting gold from sea 
water; nor had he been exploring the wreck of a sunken 
Spanish galleon. 

Ace McCartney looked at him with that air of pa- 
tient fortitude 'that comes to us all so easily when we con- 
template the misfortunes of others.- As he spoke he was 


290 


RING AND DIAMOND 


smiling with th© ironic deference of an assured superi- 
ority. 

“Easy, old boss,” he soothed. “You know there is 
only one hig fight left for you. The public knows you 
can’t live the way you have been living and fight. But 
they’ll believe there is one more winning battle in you. 
Aspiring champions are rare, but you can get on one good 
one for a mess of money. You prefer money to glory, 
eh. Mute?:’ 

The champion looked up at his manager out of 
bleared vacuous eyes. 

“W-wha-hatcher mean?” 

“I mean you’d rather lose for a hundred thousand 
than win for half that amount,” said McCartney, watch- 
ing his man purringly, contentedly, like a magician sure 
of his trick. 

Mute Hegarty mused a little while in silence. It 
stirred his soul to mutiny to have another read his mind 
with such prodigious ease, but it was true. He had one 
more championship fight in him — ^no more — and he need- 
ed the money. He was out to make a killing and such a 
killing as would keep him for the rest of his days. No 
money would come from a second fight; his admirers 
knew he could beat any man in the world. They would 
pay to see him fight once more, and they would back him 
to the limit. He had to lose. Old timers said Mute was 
as straight as a stretched string; but how would old 
timers help him? Old timers usually wound up in the 
poor house. Well, Mute Hegarty wouldn’t. Not on 
your natural! 

McCartney was studying him with the same confident 
curiosity with which a beribboned and overpetted lapdog 
regards an intruding and unkempt street cur. The 
blood shot like red hot arrows through Mute’s swelling 
veins. 

“G-g-get t-to it, Ace,” he snarled, 
k-k-kale.” 


“I n-n-need the 


FRAMED FOR THE NINTH 


291 


“You’ll fight Dick Simmons, the Australian cham- 
pion,” elucidated Mr. McCartney with that placid languor 
which was plainly the topmost flower of luxurious assur- 
ance, “and you’ll lose in the ninth round by a knockout. 
We’ll make a great international match out of it, al- 
though this Simmons shine couldn’t win on the level from 
you if he had a thousand arms and a knockout in each. 
I’ll give you my check for $50,000 now, and one for the 
same figure after the battle. Bet this money I am hand- 
ing you against yourself. I’ll place it for you, if you 
don’t mind. All the old crowd will follow my lead, and 
when our press agents get down to work they’ll be giving 
6 and 8 to one on you. I’ve got Steve Melkner to man- 
age the Australian for me, for I don’t wish it known that 
he’s in my stable. Do you get me?” 

For a time Mute Hegarty sat in cataleptic silence. 
Five minutes passed and he heard the tick of every sec- 
ond. He stood up. 

“I-I g-get you, Ace,” he said. 

The following day the newspapers came out with 
their sporting columns filled with news of the great inter- 
national match. Mute Hegarty, they informed the 
breathless public, emerged from retirement for the sole 
purpose of upholding the glory of the Stars and Stripes. 
The Australian champion was a clever boxer, and while 
he lacked great hitting powers, he could punch hard and 
get away. He had improved so much under the astute 
handling of the celebrated Steve Melkner that many were 
of the opinion that he would be able to stay away from 
the champion for twenty-five rounds and score enough 
points to earn him the decision. In his bouts with the 
second-raters he had outboxed his men in commanding 
style and won practically hands down. 

Mute Hegarty came in for his share of the calcium 
light. He was pictured as a thrifty citizen whose in- 
come was over $50,000 a year. He was the embodiment 
of animal strength, a silent, inexplicable man from whom 
no word came unnecessarily. For ten years he had de- 


292 


RING AND DIAMOND 


fended his title in a manner that won universal eulogy, 
and conducted himself with bourgeois propriety. At 
home he taught the boys and girls of his neighborhood 
many of his accomplishments in athletics. He was deep- 
ly interested in his estates and bestowed every available 
hour upon their inspection. He had bought farms and 
dwellings, which is every case had turned out good 
speculations. 

Wherever there was a moderate amount of intellec- 
tual activity it was generally accepted that Mute Hegarty 
was to Dick Simmons what Mount Mina in eruption is to 
a glow worm. Witty scribes asked Mr. Simmons if he 
wished his remains cremated, buried or stuffed. They 
treated the Australian’s hope of winning t^e champion- 
ship with satirical pleasantry. 

It was almost a week before Ace McCartney paid his 
second visit to Mute Hegarty. What he found displeased 
him not a little. Mute paced restlessly up and down the 
room. His face had fallen into tired lines, and his head 
was sunk forward on his chest. 

Mute checked an angry outburst from his manager 
with upraised hand and quelling glance. He said frankly 
he was afraid he would make a mess of faking a knock- 
out. He wanted to rehearse the affair with. Simmons. 

McCartney’s cheeks turned the color of spilled 
claret. ^ ^ 

“Do you want to spoil everything?” he demanded. 
“Simmons’ camp is being watched as closely as you are 
in this hotel. You take to your old training quarters to- 
morrow and stay there. There Is to be no communica- 
tion between the two camps. The risk is too great. 
Practice the knockout with the boxer I sent to you. How 
do you feel?” 

Mute smiled a gray smile and said he never felt bet- 
ter in his life. 

“Get good enough to go at a fast clip for nine 
rounds,” said McCartney. “Our friends are putting 
down every cent they own that Simmons will trim you. 


FRAMED FOR THE NINTH 


293 


I’ve placed $20,000 for you at 8 to 1. This Simmons fel- 
low will have to be handled gently, Mute. He’s fresh 
from Australia and don’t know anybody here except 
Steve Melkner. I can’t take a peep at him myself. 
The man I -send you to rehearse with will afterward be 
sm^uggled into the other camp to rehearse with Simmons. 
Better let me place all your money for you. Mute. No? 
All right, then ; you’ll be sorry. This will be the greatest 
killing since the flood.” 

The champion was glad to get away from the city. 
Where he had once wandered desperately lonely and un- 
friended, the whole town was at his heels. He welcomed 
the quiet of Bordentown, the hamlet where he had 
trained for all his famous battles. The house he rented 
was a low-roofed, pleasant-looking place, standing well 
back from the road, and protected from the too close 
-scrutiny of its neighbors by a baffling hedge of locust 
trees and shrubbery. Here, in the big room on the south 
side of the housd. Mute established himself with his spar- 
ring partners, scattering through the other rooms the 
somewhat scanty furniture he had always used, and which 
was the battered equipment of Ace McCartney’s bachelor 
days. 

The latter individual and his intimate associates 
took all the Hegarty money in sight and neglected to 
hold their .collective breath in agonized suspense. They 
always showed an intrepid spirit in betting on a sure 
thing, and could not see the moral obliquity of their con- 
duct. 

As the day of -battle drew near Mute became unac- 
countably irritable and gloomy. Every suggestion of- 
fered by his trainers annoyed him and he developed a 
decided talent for fault-finding. The picture of himself 
reeling before an inferior man, and falling prone, per- 
haps bleeding, in simulated unconsciousness at the feet of 
a mere novice, sickened him, and sent him snorting 
through his daily stunt with drawn face and unseeing 
eyes. 


294 


RING AND DIAMOND 


His sparring partners nudged one another when they 
saw him, and once, as he passed them, loudly regretted 
that he was losing his nerve. Mute had no reprimand for 
these men, but a wall of silence arose and thickened be- 
tween them. 

McCartney had been holding himself aloof, haugh- 
tily incurious as to how the champion was feeling, when 
one of the trainers sent him a telegram. Ace was in 
Bordentown the next day. 

“If you’re- not careful. Mute,” he said, “you won’t 
have to fake a knockout. This fellow Simmons might 
make it real, for Melkner says he’s a regular bear cat. 
And, remember, if you don’t fake the knockout and Sim- 
mons wins on his merits, you can’t claim the second pay- 
ment of $50,000 for goods delivered.” 

In spite of his habit of unmurmuring submission. 
Mute Hegarty could not suppress an oath. Which 
brought a smile to the face of his manager, who knew 
then that the champion would make the battle interesting 
and lose artistically at the time and in the manner agreed 
upon. 

It was 7 o’clock when the doors of the Hercules 
Athletic Club were thrown open. In came the crowd, 
pushing and jostling and swearing, every man in haste to 
get to his appointed place. There were throngs of men 
with facial angles and bumps behind the ears that would 
have delighted a phrenologist. There were others — ^white 
sheep vthey were, in a motley flock — ^who slipped m with 
the nervous consciousness of being out of their element. 
They longed for and yet dreaded the sight of blood and 
the dull thump of fists against tough noses. 

The electric lights flickered, the aisles rattled, the 
crowds surged and boiled and cycloned through the door, 
laughing, cursing and happy. The seats filled rapidly. 
The boxes were all inhabited with little colonies of sports 
and actors and society men. After a while there was 
more light, and under the added radiance gleamed the 


FRAMED FOR THE NINTH 


295 


canvas-floored square of the arena, as sacred to pugilism 
as were the lists down which jousted the knights of old. 

A sudden yell from the rear of the building. Loud 
cries and excited exclamations. A burly, broad-should- 
ered man came ploughing through the spectators toward 
the arena. The uproar around the ring was terrific. 
“Hegarty!” “Hegarty!" “Hegarty!” was the cry. 

Mute clambered through the ropes, bowed with a 
smile to the crowd, and sitting down in his comer, stared 
about him. Here was a man who was a delight to those 
enamored of physical strength. His great hairy arms lay 
carelessly out on the ropes like sleeping pythons. His 
hard and parlous fists were clinched and rigid in bony 
knobs. His broad chest was mapped with squares of 
muscles, like those of an Atlas upholding a world. With 
his finger and thumb he could have torn the gullet from 
any old-time gladiator, and in the strong white light, flar- 
ing from above, he was a model that Phidias or Miron 
would have loved. 

“What awful muscles!^’ said a man in evening dress, 
with the air of one criticising a brewery horse. 

“Look at the girth of his throat!” cried another. 

And in truth his neck, corded and fluted and but- 
tressed with muscle, seemed as strong as the pillar of 
Hercules. 

A howl from the outer darkness. Another rapid fire 
of cheers and exclamations. Then out from the gloom 
walked the Australian champion. Tall and pale he 
seemed in contrast to his bulky antagonist. As he ap- 
proached the ring he gazed curiously at the crowd and 
then his eyes lit on Mute Hegarty. He came with the air 
of a man who hastens to a joyous festival. 

The referee introduced champions and ex-champions 
until the impatient mob cried him down. The gong 
clanged, seconds scurried out of the ring, and the big 
event of the evening was on. 

Mute was the aggressor in the first five rounds and 
had a safe lead over his antagonist at the end of the 


296 


RING AND DIAMOND 


eighth round. Came the epochal ninth. Mute rushed 
out of his corner arid forced the Australian around the 
ring with a volley of blows to the face and body. Sim- 
mons dived into a clinch and held tight. 

“N-n-now!” hissed Mute. “P-p-put me out w-w-with 
a piv-pivot b-b-b-blowT' 

“I-I-I-I c-c-can-can-can’t d-d-do it!’* gasped Sim- 
mons, and straightened up. 

Mute Hegarty’s eyes blazed. He planted himself 
and throwing the strength of his rage,, the heat of his 
vitals, the surging of his blood and the last ounce of his 
brute strength into the punch, dropped the Australian 
like a log. 

Then bedlam broke loose. Cheers, screams, oaths and 
hisses rent the thick, smoke-laden air. Solid masses of 
cheering, cursing men moved upon the arena. Mute 
saw and heard it all like some dreamer who knows that 
the terror he is suffering from is all a dream, and yet 
finds it impossible to awaken ; 

“You bonehead!” shrieked Ace McCartney, clutch- 
ing him by the arm. “What happened?” 

The bewildered champion folded his manager in his 
arms and glued his poor, stuttering lips to his ear. Re- 
leased from Hegarty’s embrace McCartney tore across 
the ring and caught the pop-eyed Melkner as the latter 
was dragging the unconscious Australian back to his 
corner. 

“Drop that stiff!” raved Ace. “Drop him, I say! 
Mute tried to tell him to use the pivot blow and he 
mocked Mute! He stammered in Mute’s face to get him 
to lose his temper!” 

Steve Melkner laughed unsteadily. 

“Mock the Mute!” he screamed frenziedly. “Oh, 
hell, Ace, I thought you knew. Why, Simmons stammers 
worse than Mute !” 


If At First You 
Don’t Succeed 


“Maggie,” said I to the finest girl in the world, “I 
won’t quit the ring till I win the championship. I’m right 
in line for a bout with Kid Kelso now.” 

Maggie could say more than any man ever dared say 
to me — and keep his feet. 

“Jimmy,” she laughed, “you’re as much of a mystery 
as the reason a woman cries when she’s glad. You have 
a nice little bundle in the bank, and you are supposed to 
be eager to throw aside the gloves, and yet you say you 
must win the championship from Kelso. Don’t you know 
that he can make you look as handy as a steamboat qn 
a farm?” 

“Yes? Well, Kelso would be as easy ” 

“As plowing a forty-acre field with a penknife,” 
she finished for me. “Don’t sell your chestnuts to me. 
As Mr. Pegotty says, I wish you well and I wish you 
happy, but you are a trifle too pig-headed. Kelso beat 
you once, you know. My, I’ll never forget the bad head 
he put on you! You looked like the loser of a battle 
royal, Jimmy.” 

“Maggie,” I frothed, “I wouldn’t get too witty if I 
were you. You’re certainly making the truth hustle to 
continue being stranger than fiction. Kelso got a de- 
cision in twenty chapters, but that was when I was new 
to the game. If I ever get him into the ring again I’ll 
make him look like an accident on its way to happen 
somewhere.” 


RING AND DIAMOND 


298 


Maggie’s eyes sparkled with mischief. They were 
blue and dancing, of that fathomless, brilliant sky tone 
which painters strive for in vain. 

“Back to the ice wagon, Jim,” she cried, “it’s seven 
o’clock L If you seek another match with Kelso the pub- 
lic will be compelled to believe that the fool-killer has a 
censurable habit of taking unduly prolonged naps at the 
wrong time.” 

“Well,” I shot back at her, “it’s a good thing I never 
trouble myself with a close analysis of anything that a 
woman says or does. I “am greatly distressed to disre- 
gard your advice, Maggie, but I am going to win the 
championship before I quit the game. It won’t be long 
ere fame will braid the laurel in my new hair cut.” 

Maggie’s eyes were snapping again, and she lashed 
out with: 

“I’ll marry you when you have won"^ the champion- 
ship then. And I’ll tell you frankly that I think that 
means — never !” 

“Because he beat me when I was just out of high 
school,” I said easily, “it doesn’t follow that he can re- 
peat the trick. In fact, I’m sure he can’t, and I want 
another try. If at first you. don’t succeed ” 

“Try, try a woman’s patience,” jeered Maggie, at 
her old habit of concluding my remarks. “Wisdom must 
be bought on the installment plan, and the wisest cannot 
help the fool who will not accept counsel. I hope I shall 
not be blamed because you show a stubborn disposition 
to become a mortuary statistic.” 

“No fear, Maggie,” said I very humbly. “One of 
life’s paradoxes is that people with weak minds are inva- 
riably headstrong. If I succeed in wresting the light- 
weight cahmpionship from Kelso I shall immediately 
clinch a match with a blind consumptive or a survivor of 
the Black Hawk War.” 

That was the. last I saw of Maggie Brice until I had 
pinned Champion Kid Kelso down to a twenty-round 


IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED 


299 


argument with the mitts. He did not hesitate a minute 
in signing articles. 

“Jimmy,” he said soberly, “you were made for me. 
I’ve been fighting in the ring longer than you’ve been on 
this earth, but when I get mine it won’t be from you. It 
often happens that a boxer gets the Indian sign on an- 
other. I have it on you. You couldn’t beat me with a 
broadax.” 

They tell me that in my second clash with Kelso I 
fought one of the gamest battles flesh and bone could 
withstand. The champion was not long in discovering 
that my punches, while they rocked him, could not stun, 
so he tore after me like a goring bull. I surprised every- 
body with my speed and cleverness, and for a time stood 
toe to toe and slugged. But in the fifth round, though 
I used every trick to stall and save myseir, Kelso put 
across the punch soporific. For the second time I had 
dipped my colors to the champion. 

Maggie Brice received me with admirable restraint. 
“I’m not one of the crowing kind,” she said, ”and I can’t 
bring myself to say, T told you so.’ But there — ^that will 
be all of that. Did you get badly hurt?” 

“You’re not crowing,” said I, “but you’ve managed 
to remind me of it all just the same. As for being hurt, 
it will be an automobile funeral J^no flowers; interment 
strictly private.” 

“Did you come to quarrel?” 

“I came,” I said deliberately, “to tell you what Kid 
Kelso told me ; Maggie, you were made for me, and when- 
ever you are out of my sight I am almost out of my 
mind. For this and kindred reasons, I think we had bet- 
ter not delay the marriage any longer.” 

Maggie’s checks, which had been the pink of the 
pomegranate, now glowed crimson; her’ eyes seemed to 
sparkle as irised sprays in a fountain. 

“Oh, Jimmy!” she breathed. “You are going to quit 
the ring?” 


300 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Until after the wedding, dear heart. Then I’ll ask 
Kelso for one more chance at his crown, and when I de- 
throne him we will 

The light went out of Maggie’s face so suddenly I 
stopped in dismay. 

“You want to fight Kelso again!”' she cried, anger 
and incredulity in her voice. “Well, of all the conceit! 
Jimmy, it is difficult to speak with patience or modera- 
tion of this latest exhibition of your egotism !” 

“Please don’t call it that. I’m not conceited. In 
our next meeting I am just as apt to win as Kelso. It 
only takes one punch.” 

“But you do the taking.” 

I had to concede this point. 

“It is about time for Kelso to receive his medicine,” 
I told her. “He has been in the game for more years 
that I can remember, and in our last fight it was very 
plain that he was going back. I have a firm, unexplain- 
able conviction that I am destined to dethrone him.” 

“And I,” said Maggie warmly, “have an unalterable 
notion that Kid Kelso was right when he said that you 
were made for him. I admire perseverance, but in the 
crazy manner you are using it there’s no question but 
that it is less use than a hole in a doughnut. It begins 
to look as if you will once again go through the motions 
of battling with the champion-” 

“And if I get another chance,” I declared fervidly, 
“you will see Kid Kelso go through the ropes like the 
grace of heaven through a camp meeting. If he thinks 
I’m a bum he has been too discreet to let the thought 
shape itself articulately.” 

“Jimmy, you make me laugh. I have a genial and 
tolerant temper, but I warn you you’re getting on my 
nerves. Kid Kelso can’t give you another fight. You 
haven’t deserved it, and the public would be down on him 
like mice on cheese. It seems — it seems as if you would 
rather be champion than my husband.” 


IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED 


301 


“Maggie,” said I sternly, “you know that is far from 
the facts of the case. I will marry you now — gladly, 
proudly.” 

“And go on boxing?” 

“Only until I have beaten Kid Kelso for the cham- 
pionship.” 

Maggie’s tone stiffened perceptibly. 

“Jimmy, this reaches the climax of absurdity and ef- 
frontery as well. I am obliged to tell you that I cannot 
marry a prize fighter. I do not desire to be unduly pre- 
cipitate in the matter, but please do not see me until you 
have severed your connection with the ring. I wish you 
luck and a little more common sense.” 

I took her hand, my hat, and a quick departure, 
laughing. There was no present ground for the hope 
that Kid Kelso would give me another fight, so I took the 
bull by the horns and defeated two of his most formidable 
challengers. The critics kindly said that it was perfect- 
ly oibvious that Jimmy Gibson was the only contender in 
sight who had been tested in the crucible of experience. 

Kelso must have sensed what was coming. Before 1 
had time to issue a public challenge he sent for me. He 
wanted to know forthwith whether I wanted the light- 
weight crown or the cash that went with it. Then he be- 
came acutely personal and said he thought he could offer 
inducements that would be particularly appealing. 

“I’ve never been in a frame-up in my life, Kelso,” 
said I bluntly, “and I doubt very much if I would know 
how to act. 

“Oh, yes, you would,” he assured me. “I’ve about 
decided to retire from the game. Been thinking serious- 
ly of taking a wife you know. Of coure I want to get all 
the money out of it I can. As near as I can figure you 
have some coin and are out for the glory. I’ve had all 
the glory I want; it’s coin now. I’ll lay down to you for 
your end of the purse. You can make that up by betting 
on yourself. I’ll place my money on you also. It will 
be a great killing.” 


302 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Kelso, I think you ought to pay me to lay down this 
trip,” said I. “I’ve decided to retire from the game the 
same as you, and I’ve also concluded to take a wife. 
You know damn well you’ve given me two chances at 
your title; the first time I didn’t know how it was done, 
and the second time I didn’t squeal. That’s what puzzled 
you — that’s the reason you are here now with a crooked 
proposition. You tried to get out of this fight, but I have 
forced you into it. When we meet again there will be no 
snuff used in a clinch ; you won’t knock me cold when my 
muscles are limp and paralyzed on the verge of sneezing! 
One or twice it might work, Kelso, but thrice — never!” 

A queer shiver ran through Kelso’s body, but I knew 
it was not bom of undiluted fear. It was a palsy of 
rage as well as panic. 

“Why don’t you tell that bughouse tale to the papers 
and the public?” he snarled. “Swell chance you’d have 
of getting that tale across. Snuff, eh? Why, you must 
be crazy! It couldn’t be done.” 

“That’s what I thought until our last fight, Kelso. 
Now I know better.” 

“Then all bets are off, eh?” 

“If you mean by that that I am not going to fake, 
you have the right idea. The referee will smell the heel 
or your glove every time you come out of your comer.” 

Kelso laughed boisterously, but with a flagrant note 
of insincerity. 

“I should worry!” he jeered. “Didn’t I tell you that 
you were made for me? Well, I wasn’t joshing when 1 
said it. After you take your next sleep, I will retire un- 
defeated and marry Maggie Brice.” 

“Who?” I shouted. “What do you know about Mag- 
gie Brice? What is Maggie Brice to you? Answer me 
or I’ll ” 

“Easy, boy, easy!” he intermpted, holding up his 
hand. “Maggie Brice is the girl I am going to marry, if 
she will have me.” 

‘‘If she’ll have you!” I sneered. “That’s different.’* 


IP AT first you DON’T SUCCEED 


303 


“Maybe,” he rejoined, “and then maybe not. You 
said you wouldn’t marry her till you had captured the 
championship, and that gives me lots of hope. Did you 
imagine you owned the lady?” 

I went straight from Kelso to Maggie. The finest 
girl in the world did not seem surprised to see me. 
“I’ve been expecting you ever since I met Mr. Kelso,” she 
laughed, switching on a myriad of tiny lamps suspended 
by slim chains from the ceiling of the tapestry-hung re- 
ception hall. “I see by the papers that you are going to 
fight again, you two. Well, the public is very patient, 
isn’t it?” 

“Maggie,” said»I, “I came straight from Kelso. He 
told me he was going to ask for your hand after this fight. 
That is going to make me tell you a few things that I 
should not have mentioned under any other circum- 
stances.” 

Thereupon I told her just what I had related to Kelso, 
and I made her understand that I had not been mistaken 
in the slenderest degree. 

“And you are going to quit the ring after this fight, 
win or lose?” 

There was gleam of mischief in her eyes as she put 
the question. , 

T shall not quit the ring till I have wrested the cham- 
pionship from this crook, Kelsrr;'’ I maintained stubborn- 
ly. “But I want your answer now to a formal proposal 
of marriage, win or lose the fight as I may.” 

She left me for a few minutes, and upon her return 
placed in my hand two envelopes — one blue, the other 
white. 

“If you win,” she said solemnly, “look for your 
answer in the white envelope. If you lose, then open the 
blue ” 

“My doom is now sealed,” I said lightly. “Don’t re- 
ceive Kelso any more, Maggie. It is awful to think of it 
— an illiterate prize fighter calling upon a young woman 
of wealth and refinement and so rich in her own right as 


RING AND DIAMOND 


304 


to be sought after by I intercepted her look of 

amusement, realized the situation, and concluded sav- 
agely: “Another prize fighter.” 

“Mr. Kelso has two envelopes, Jimmy,” she said 
quietly. “He has his answer in victory or defeat, and 
with similar instructions.” 

Once more I was in the ring with the champion light- 
weight of the world, but this time with a referee I could 
trust — Billy Nixon, known the country over for his integ- 
rity and courage. 

Kelso’s gloves were carefully examined between 
each round, and every possible precaution was taken to 
guard against trickery of any kind. For the first ten 
rounds of the fight I outpointed Kelso by such a wide 
margin that the crowd began to root for me to win. He 
let loose in the fourteenth round and tried nard for a 
knock-out. He ripped a left to my stomach and a right 
hook to the jaw that sent me reeling backward. That 
hook had all his force and weight behind it, and I could 
see that it amazed him when it failed to put me in dream- 
land. He backed away from me, a puzzled look on his 
face, and then I took the aggressive. I rushed him into 
his own comer, and when both his hands went up to his 
face, my arms were working in and out like steel piston 
rods, my fists drumming a merciless tattoo upon his 
stomach. 

When the nineteenth round opened I was a sure 
winner on points. My seconds cautioned me not to take 
any chances, so I just feinted and danced around him. 
When we came out of our corners for the twentieth and 
last round, he tried the old trick of pretending to shake 
hands and starting with the same motion a wicked upper- 
cut for the jaw. I was on my guard, however, and 
rammed a straight left into his mouth as I side-stepped. 
I refused to swing my right for fear of leaving an open- 

but I sent the left jabs hurtling in with greater speed 
than ever. 


IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED 


305 


‘Not up to snuff this trip !’' I panted. I couldn’t help 
saying that, the only remark I made during the whole 
fight. He smiled a gory smile. Then he stopped spar- 
ring, dropped his hands to his sides, and glanced down at 
my feet. 

“Your laces are untied,” he gasped. “They’ll throw 
you. I’m going square this fight; you win by a mile.” 

I looked down, then up as a hoarse shout of warning 
rang out, but too late to evade a terrific right-hand 
swing that caught me on the point of the jaw and dropped 
me senseless to the floor. 

I came to my senses in my dressing room, so dis- 
gusted at my own stupidity that I slipped away from my 
friends and seconds at the first opportunity, and while a 
shrieking mob still swirled about the ringside. It was 
not until I was almost home that I thought of the blue 
envelope and opened it. Judge of my surprise when 1 
read on the note sheet it contained the one word; Yes. 

A vista of daylight opened to me at that magic 
word, and it did not take me long to reach the side of my 
promised wife. 

“Maggie!” I cried. “My darling, you must love me 
or you couldn’t have put yes in both envelopes.” 

“Then you opened both, you naughty boy?” 

“No,” I denied with truth; “only the blue one.” 

“But you should have opened the white!” 

“I was knocked out; Kelso is still champion!” 

“Then you haven’t seen the extras,” she gasped. 
“Here—look! Read this!” 

And I read: 

Referee Nixon’s decision, which makes Jimmy Gib- 
son the new title holder, is as follows: The bout was for 
twenty rounds, and Gibson outpointed Kelso so far that 
one knockdown at the end of the fight could not offset 
the margin. If I had counted ten on Gibson, then Kelso 
would have won by the knock-out route, but the gong 
rang while I was counting seven and ended the round 
and the fight. I must in all honesty award Gibson the 
decision on points. 


306 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“And you can’t try again,” smiled Maggie when I 
had finished reading the decision that made me light- 
weight champion of the world. “You gave me your word 
that you would quit the ring when you defeated Kelso. 
Moreover, he has announced his own retirement.” 

“To read his 'blue envelope!” I chuckled. 

“The white contained the same answer — no!” 

“But, Maggie,” I teased, “don’t you know two nega- 
tives make an affirmative?” 

“Yes,” she admitted with a smile, “but Kelso isn’t 
enough of a grammarian to know that. And then I put 
yes in both your envelopes, so what can two affirmatives 
mean?” 

“It means,” said I, “an early marriage and a happy 
husband!” 


Advice From the Corner 


Buster Brannigan, middleweight champion pugilist 
of the world, regarded Hank Taggart with a bland lack of 
comprehension. 

“Are you trying to make a bull fighter out of me?’^ 
he demanded. “I may be as thick as the back-fat of a 
bull caribou, but your line of conversation is all pig Latin 
to me. Translate yourself into English, old dear, and 
you can have an undivided attention. Proceed, little 
one!” 

Hank Taggart greeted him with a smile that was not 
altogether a success. 

“La Savate,” he explained patiently, “is the French 
style of boxing which permits the use of both hands and 
feet during a contest, and the man with the most nimble 
foot and heaviest kick is usually the victor. This fellow 
Jean Laroque is the champion at this sort of fighting. 
As there is no one in the same class with you, it occured 
to me that the only way to draw a crowd and get the 
money would be by springing a novelty. I plan for you 
to fight this Laroque, letting him use his style, and you 
use your mitts.” 

Brannigan looked his manager over with a flicker of 
his nostrils which was remarkably like a sneer. 

“Say,” he bellowed, “can’t you frame me to appear 
in a rough-and-tumble with a dozen or so real handy 
elephants? Or can’t you tie my hands behind me and let 
me loose among the German army? What do you think 
I am, anyhow? I’ve got as much use for a kicking boxer 
as a swordfish has for a penknife.” 


308 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Now, now, Buster,” soothed Taggart with a sickly 
smile ; “don’t get me wrong. You’ve cleaned up for 
every drawing card of your weight, you know, and there s 
nothing in sight to attract the coin. It was only a sug- 
gestion, Buster, and if you say so I’ll tell the Frenchman 
the thing is off. Shall I?” 

“Did you tell him there was anything doing? Have 
you gone ahead with any arrangements without con- 
sulting me?” 

A slow tide of red suffused the face of the manager. 

“I told Laroque you would meet him,” he admitted. 
“I didn’t think you had anything to fear from a French- 
man like him. Besides, he’s ten pounds- lighter than 
you.” ^ 

“I haven’t anything to fear from a thousand Ba- 
roques!” roared Brannigan. “It is mighty funny, though, 
that I haven’t anything to say about circus stunts you 
frame up for me. What was your cut? Tell me, you 
Irish Jew, what did you squeeze the Frenchman for? 
Out with it! How much?” 

The champion indubitably looked able to kill a thous* 
and la savate artists as he stood in his fighting trunks, his 
lithe, superbly muscled, body glowing from recent exer- 
cise. He was plainly overwrought. A dark flush over- 
spread his forehead, and his teeth raked his under lip. 

“Jean said there would be a hundred in it for me,” 
quavered Taggart. “But I really told him that you 
would have to decide the matter — that all I could do was 
to put the thing up to you. I’ve never held out on you, 
Buster, and we will go fifty-fifty on that hundred.” 

After- an interval, Buster Braningan spoke without 
heat or passion, in the deliberate tone of a man whose 
course is decided. And the sound of his voice made his 
manager quiver like a terrified horse. 

“You can tell this Frenchman I’ll fight him,” he said 
coldly. “You can also tell him that he can use his feet, 
an axe, or 'anything he is husky enough to lug into the 
ring with him. You take his hundred bucks. Hank, and 


ADVICE FROM THE CORNER 


309 


keep it, for this is the last piece of business you do for 
me. I’m through with you!” 

Taggart gurgled in his astonishment; the tears came 
to his eyes. He turned and walked a bit unsteadily tow^ 
ard the door. 

“Do you mean that, Buster?” he ask4d, his hand on 
the knob. 

“Hell, yes! Get out!” 

Inside of an hour Hank Taggart was closeted with 
Jean Laroque in the latter’s apartment at a cheap hotel in 
a dingy comer of the city. 

“Everything is arranged for the fight,” said Taggart 
glibly. You get fame and money and I lose my position 
as manager of Buster Brannigan.” 

Jean Laroque was rather tall, well built, and not un- 
handsome. His face was that of a hero of romance. 
There was a peculiar scar over his right eye which gave 
it the appearance of being double-lidded, but did not at 
all detract from his good looks. There was about him a 
quickness and precision of movement that suggested the 
cougar. 

“But how?” he cried. “I hope I was not In any 
manner to blame, my friend. You shall have your hun- 
dred dollars, positively — ^when I get my share of the 
purse.” 

“I hope you kick his head off !” flared Taggart. “He 
wants it all and leaves me ^11 the work to do. Why, for 
the past year he has been treating me like a worm in the 
dust.” 

Laroque looked at Hank’s white, plastic face and 
chubby hands; and si^iled an odd little smile. Perhaps 
the manger reminded him, as he reminded Buster Branni- 
gan, of the fat white kind of worms one finds in bad 
chestnuts. 

“I have always managed myself,” he began tenta- 
tively, when Taggart cut in with: “I couldn’t do anything 
with or for you, Jean. It would be different if you could 
box — American fashion, you know.” 


810 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I can — American fashion, too. I have boxed the 
best English teachers that ever came to Paris. They 
seemed to think I was a fair pupil, my friend.’' 

Taggart snorted his disgust. “Englishmen have for- 
gotten how to box,” he stated emphatically. “They are 
pie for the American boys. Have you anything to sug- 
gest about the coming match?” 

“Give it a great deal of advertisement,” smiled Jean 
Laroque. “Frenchmen will want to learn about it, and 
they will pay to see it. Remember, also, I am the un- 
defeated la savate champion. You need not mention that 
I was educated and raised in England, however.” 

“Leave it to me to get the public’s curiosity,” said 
Taggart. “Keep fit and if you can kick Brannigan’s face 
in before he gets you with a K. O. I’ll make you a pres- 
ent of three hundred.” 

The crowd that turned out to see the novel contest 
between the middleweight champion boxer and the 
French la savate king made good Hank Taggart’s boast 
that he could arouse the public’s curiosity. The work of 
promoting the bout was done with finish and sincerity. 
The use of feet by one of the contestants lent a spice to 
the encounter that made it no less enjoyable. In fact, it 
held peculiar fascinations for the unveneered human be- 
ings who paid at the gate. 

Buster Brannigan was disposed to treat the whole 
affair as something of a jest. He had been a part of 
epic scenes and epochal moments in the history of the 
Queensbury game, and the infantility of la savate filled 
him with derision and disgust. But when he made his 
little bow to the audience he wore a smile that seemed 
brighter than all the suns and broader than space. 

As soon as Laroque came prancing into the ring, the 
referee introduced the contestants, explained the dumb- 
founding innovation, and the circus was on. 

Brannigan fell into his accustomed crouch and the 
Frenchman stood still with arms crossed over his chest. 
Buster laughed at his cocky attitude, but his hilarity 


ADVICE FROM THE CORNER 


311 


came to a sudden conclusion. Jean leaped into the air 
and kicked Buster in the jaw so hard that the sound of 
the impact was heard all over the house. The French- 
man dropped lightly to the . floor, struck a bona fide pugil- 
istic attitude and before the stunned and amazed Buster 
could collect his wits he had planted three beautiful left 
jabs on the nose and jolted him with a right hook to the 
jaw. Recovering, himself, Buster rushed like a mad- 
dened bull. 

The Frenchman whirled around and evaded the rush. 
Then he began circling the ring like a Marathon runner, 
with Brannigan pelting him with every sort of punch 
known to the sport. But there was only and always his 
back to hit, and he was continually going away from the 
punishment, so that none of the blows were dangerous. 
The crowd howled for the Frenchman to stand up and 
fight, and at last he halted adn tried to make a stand. 

It was as game as it was unexpected, and for a min- 
ute there was as brilliant a bit of boxing as was ever 
glimpsed; then Buster beat down the otheFs guard and 
sent him crashing to the floor with a terrific hook deliv- 
ered at close quarters. 

Laroque coasted across the ring, struggled to his 
knees, went down again ; he caught at the ropes with one 
groping hand, pulled himself to his feet, and as Buster 
flung himself at him he turned and ran crazily around the 
ring, his ferocious pursuer lashing at his back with over- 
hand swings. His head must have cleared in a split 
second, for he ducked under one of BusteFs swings and 
jumped into the air. 

Just as quickly Buster stopped, set himself, and 
launched a terrific right against the jaw. The blow was 
perfectly timed and caught the Frenchman two feet off 
the ground. It was the end. 

Hank Taggart rushed forward to grab Buster’s hand. 
The champion received him with a dark scowl. 

‘‘Keep your congratulations under your belt,” he 
rasped, pushing his manager away from him. “That guy 


312 


RING AND DIAMOND 


kicked three teeth out of my face, thanks to your thirst 
for novelties. I guess you were praying that he'd kick 
my block off. Beat it. You and me are done. Get 
that?” 

Taggart saw there was no use arguing the matter, 
and he exhibited discretion that was unmistakably a 
better part of valor. One hour later he was interview- 
ing Jean Laroque. 

“I made Brannigan, and I can make you his master,” 
he told the excited Frenchman. “You’ve got a good left 
hand, a fair punch, and you’re as speedy as they make 
them. I can make a Queensbury champ out of you if 
you can forget that kicking stuff and split fifty-fifty. 
What do you say?” 

“Put me to the test!” cried Jean. “Get me some 
fights with the fists alone!” 

And Hank Taggart lost no time in doing so. In the 
campaign that he mapped out Jean went right down the 
line demonstrating his general superiority over the sec- 
ond and third-raters. At last the sporting writers of the 
country agreed that Jean Laroque was entitled to a 
match with Buster Brannigan. Jean had learned one 
thing that many boxers had never been taught. He had 
learned to keep cool and pay attention to the coaching 
of his manager. 

“Most of the American boxers,” quoth Hank Tag- 
gart, “won’t listen to the instructions of a manager, and 
they tear right into their opponent, hitting right and left 
at any spot — ^hitting when they are close up and hitting 
when they are far away. Jean doesn’t waste his punches 
in such fashion. He aims every one of them at some par- 
ticular spot, and he generally manages to land. He wear 
a man down just as a mason cracks a big stone by con- 
tinually pounding on one spot. In every contest he takes 
his time and always looks to me for instructions.” 

“I owe him very much,” said Laroque in referring to 
his manager. “He has made me a boxer with the fists 
alone when I should have been a failure with the foot 


ADVICE FROM THE CORNER 


313 


style. And together we have invented a new punch — a 
part of my style. Watch for it!^^ 

“The whirling punch will cook Brannigan^s goose, 
Jean,” prophesied Taggart. “It will be curtains for the 
champ when you pull it. Keep right on practicing that 
wrinkle, Jean, and we’ll make them say la savate won the 
battle for the middleweight championship of the world!” 

And is was just as Hank said. Buster Brannigan, 
compelled to recognize the claims of the new middle- 
weight phenomenon, did not try to run out of the match. 
Though he was making easy money with boxing exhibi- 
tions, and could have easily postponed the bout for a year 
or more, he received Baroque’s challenge with a delight 
that was unfeigned and almost ecstatic. 

There was no shuffling, no red tape, no excuse about 
previous engagements, ill health or theatrical contracts. 
The middleweight champion was as eager as a young man 
seeking an amorous rendezvous. That much should be 
said of Buster. 

Thousands of lovers of the red corpuscle, and not a 
few feminine devotees of the cave man, turned out to 
witness the struggle for the championship. They saw 
Jean saunter into the limelight in a vociferous bathrobe, 
tough as a pinon sapling and as graceful, but looking the 
kind of young man that adjusts his necktie in slot- 
machine mirrors. And they saw Buster, sunburned and 
sinewy, nonchalantly wearing the certified halo of a 
champion,, and looking as if he cared no more for ob 
stacles than a runaway horse. 

And they saw a fight! It started like this: Jean 
began things with his slashing left hand, and displayed 
the prettiest footwork ever witnessed in a ring. He 
danced all around Buster, plying his lightning left, and 
the champion grinned and waited. 

Jean bolted and ducked so fast in the second round 
that Buster, who had the heavier artillery, dragged his 
heavy punches to the firing line only to have the French- 
man throw his left-handed bomb and escape the long, 


31.4 


RING AND DIAMOND 


heavy counter. The third round was much the same save 
that Jean set himself at times and slugged with the cham- 
pion, but fought all the time for the body and ducked 
when the champion’s right came swinging over at him. 

In the fourth round Buster landed a right to the chin 
and it sliot Jean to the ropes. The wily Frenchman 
pressed back and permitted the resilient hemp to throw 
him into a clinch. As he pulled himself away he whirled 
his heavier opponent around. Buster seemed to turn as 
if on a pivot, and Jean drove a short left hook to the jaw 
that dropped him for the count. 

Up jumped the champion, shaking his head, only to 
find himself in another clinch. As they broke, Buster 
was again whirled around, and- again took the count. 
The audience began to shout and a storm of hisses were 
hurled at the Frenchman, but the referee found that 
there was no unfair advantage taken by the challenger, 
and the whirling punch, for which Buster patently could 
find no effective defense, continued to carry destruction 
to his camp. 

Going down for the third time, Buster did not take 
the full count. Springing to his feet at the count of 
four, he turned tail and fled the length of the ring. 

“Go after him,!” yelled Hank Taggart excitedly. 
“Put him away!” 

Jean followed the retreating champion. Then the 
latter suddenly turned on him with a shift of tactics, hail- 
ing left-hand punches on his fape and driving him against 
the ropes of his own corner. 

Buster pulled back his right hand, and Jean, think- 
ing it only a threat, fairly leaped into a straight right- 
hand punch that laid him over the ropes. He staggered, 
reeled and clutched blindly to grasp the champion. Then 
Buster started to unload every punch he possessed. Jean 
was flat-footed, taking everything with limp and flopping 
head and arms, when Hank Taggart screamed above the 
din of frenzied shouts: 

“Use your feet, Jean! Use your feet!” 


ADVICE PROM THE CORNER 


315 


With staring eyes and superhuman strength, the 
semi-conscious Frenchman shot an uppercut to the point 
of the champion’s jaw, and as Buster reeled away with 
palsied arms and glazing eyes, Jean leaped up with a con- 
vulsive effort and kicked him in the mouth. 

■ • The referee awarded Buster the fight on a foul, and 
beckoned the police into the ring to protect his opponent 
from .the infuriated audience. Hank Taggart danced 
around like a maniac, but collapsed in a disgusted heap 
when poor Jean looked at him with reproachful eyes and 
said : 

“You told me to use my feet!”' • - 


1 Jr? 


V 




I 











i 



A' 



% 


A 


I 



p 



0 


\ 

k 





















K 









>VI 




• .r 



- 



> 


« . 






■ 5 <.. 




#. - 


•' 




V' 


The Stab "of Suspicion 


Gerald Musgrave was a dudish young man whose 
only ambition in life was to pocket fifteen pool balls with- 
out a miss. His associates called him a sissy. As a boy 
he never played baseball, but there was a legend that he 
was a regular demon at croquet. When the roughnecks 
had scarred themselves with shinny, duck on the rock, hog 
pile and deliver the black pudding, Gerald was always 
found intact. He never succumbed to the intemperate 
zeal of boyhood and grew into an unwarlike, soft and 
slothful young person to whom any more strenuous exer- 
cise than pool was eminently distasteful. But as a knight 
of the cue he was as smooth as the business end of a 
banana. 

It was through the medium of a pool game that 
Gerald first met Willie Hatch. Only his mother called 
him Willie. He was a tough, unsettled Bill to the r^st of 
the world, with a temper like a train of fireworks and as 
much patience as a teething baby. The family cat fled in 
terror when he kicked at the door, for she well remem- 
bered the flogging she got when, im her unsophisticated 
kittenhood, she stole BilFs chop while he went from the 
table to And his cigarette papers. He thought nothing of 
slapping his sister’s face if she ^^sassed” him and never 
referred to his mother less gently than as ‘‘the old 
woman.” Until he made a friend of Gerald Musgrave he 
cherished the conviction that no man could have more 
than a thousand dollars at one time without being a 
wealthy malefactor. But somewhere in his nature was a 
kindly strain come of wholesomeness if not of gentle 
breeding. 


318 


RING AND DIAMOND 


Bill Hatch admired Gerald for his skill with the cue, 
and Gerald admired BilFs skill with boxing gloves. Bill 
conceded that it took an unusual allotment of gray mat- 
ter to win pool games while Gerald readily owned that to 
attain Bill’s proficiency with the mitts required a vigil- 
ant eye, a skillful hand and an active brain. Gerald was 
a liberal spender and rode on the crest of fortune’s wave. 
Whenever Bill was short of change Jerry, as Bill insisted 
upon calling‘Tiim, rose to the occasion magnificiently. 
And Jerry liked Bill. Ordinarily as shy as a hermit 
thrush. Bill gave him a feeling of boldness and he took to 
him like a squirrel to hickory nuts. Bill fought his battles 
and flourished on his bounty. 

Bill undertook to teach Jerry the manly art and after 
a few lessons proupunced him a pupil far out of the com- 
mon. He said he knew a real boxer when he saw one, 
and Jerry would make a boxer if he stuck to it! But 
Jerry knew that Bill was addicted to flattery and forever 
three-cheering his own judgment. Besides the subject 
was full of controversial possibilities, and desiring Bill’s 
friendship above all else he/said he thought he would put 
his cue in the rack and retire from the gam.e. He con- 
sidered this justifiable diplomacy. 

You’ve got a good left hand and a dandy eye for 
distance,” Bill told him. “All you need to make a first- 
rate scrapper is beef and experience.” 

Jerry said it gratified him immensely to know that, 
but his lot in life hejd enough unnecessary activities as it 
was. And he could never be persuaded to allow minor 
matters to assume major proportions. Boxing wasn’t an 
attractive pastime for one who spent the s3mcopated 
hours of life in loafing; rather an egeregious and almost 
criminal waste of time. 

Bill was disgusted that Jerry should hold such views, 
but disgust was quickly turned to anger after Jerry met 
his sister. Bill’s was a dingy home in a shabby neighbor- 
hood, but it took on>an irresistible attraction for Jerry 
after he met Dixie Hatch, Dixie was ^o wondrously 


THE STAB OF SUSPICION 


319 


beautiful she was impossible to describe and equally im- 
possible to resist. She captured Jerry horse, foot and 
guns. 

As if a cloud had swallowed up the sun Bill was 
aware of an encroaching gloom. Jerry was all right as 
a pal, but in the light of a brother-in-law he paled into 
insignificance. He couldn’t hold his own in -r6ugh com- 
pany and was too lazy to learn. Not that he wasn’t a 
friend of Jerry’s — sure he was — to the last gasp. A real_ 
friend knows all your faults and likes you just the same; 
that’s the way it was with he and Jerry. The kid was a 
good enough chum, but he lacked the manhood that was 
the open sesame to the Hatch family. It was up to him 
to speak to Dixie. 

“Say, Dix,” he said off-handedly one evening, “I 
guess I told you about Jerry and his yellow streak, didn’t 
I? I’ve had to punch a couple of fellows for him already, 
and I’d do it again, understand, but a quitter ain’t the 
kind of a hairpin for a girl like you. Get me?” 

Dixie broke into a round laugh. “Sure!” she cried 
with convincing heartiness. “I hate a coward, and I’ve 
had so many offers of marriage I have to use printed re- 
jection slips!” 

“That’s the idea,” approved Bill. “You can do bet- 
ter by being careful and not jumping at the first guy that 
offers ihmself. You’re a school teacher and educated, 
and you’ve got to make your education get you some- 
thing.” 

Bill didn’t encounter Jerry until several nights later, 
and then he had to admit to himself that Musgrave was 
the most belligerent-looking coward he had ^ever met. 
Jerry was as chipper and smiling and glossily groomed as 
though he had just stepped out of his bath, but the words 
that escaped the barrier of his teeth were strange and 
exasperatingly bellicose. 

“Say, Bill, I’ve got a crow to pick with you! Where 
did you ever get the idea that I was yellow? Why are 
you telling people I lack real manhood? I think you’ve 


320 RING AND DIAMOND 

got an apology to make, and it’s coming to me if I know 
anything. I’m waiting for your answer, old boy, and I’m 
not at the other end of a telephone to receive it, either!” 

Was this a grandstand bluif to make Hatch concede 
his bravery? Bill thought so, and fixed him with a 
scrutiny meant to be impaling. 

“What’s all this?” he growled, pretending his intelli- 
gence had suffered a sudden eclipse. 

“You heard me. Bill!” responded Jerry, flushing with 
excitement. “What did I ever do that you should class 
me as a yellow dog? I’m no scrapper, and I’ve never 
looked for trouble, but no fellow is going to wipe his 
feet on me. Not even Bill Hatch!” 

Bill threw up his head and his eyes took fire. 

“That’s enough of that, Jerry! If you think you 
can sass me without gettin’ a smack on the jaw you’re 
sure mistaken. I ain’t got any apologies to make to any- 
body. I told a certain party you were an all right guy — 
good enough for me, anyhow — ^but you were not the kind 
of a hairpin for a girl like her. I said I had to punch a 
couple a guys because you had a yellow streak, and I told 
the truth. You nev^r made a move to take your own 
part, and you know it!” 

Jerry shrank, almost as if Bill’s voice had struck 
him. The muscles about his mouth were tense, his eyes 
were full of pain. 

“You think I’m yellow!” he gasped. “Bill, I don’t 
know how to fight a little bit, but I’m not a coward. You 
might be able to slaughter me, but I’m not afraid of a 
beating. Am I a coward because I don’t know how to 
fight? Well, I’ll show you how a coward can take a 
licking!” 

He dashed his fist against Bill’s granite jaw and 
squared off. And Bill’s anger cooled at the sight. 
Fighting down his initial impulse to take satisfaction for 
this insult, he spat contemptuously at the ground and 
walked away, partly to keep his hands to himself and 


THE STAB OF SUSPICION 


321 


partly to conceal the flash of approbation that leaped to 
his eyes. 

Dixie Hatch learned of the affair from both partici- 
pants. Her ideas on the subject were not clear enough 
to be phrased with exactness, but she went so far as to 
say that anyone who took a punch at her big brother 
couldn't very handily he called a coward. it was her 
opinion that the whole affair would soon assume its 
proper proportions as a tempest in a teapot. 

When Jerry told his mother that he Contemplated 
matrimony with Dixie Hatch that worthy lady exhibited 
hostile unbelief. 

“You are entirely too young!" she exclaimed. “Be- 
sides, you should be looking a little higher than a poor 
school teacher. Not that I have anything against the 
girl. Your sister, Stella, has met her doing churcn work, 
and says she’s quite nice. But* her brother’s ambition is 
to become a champion pugilist. We won’t have prize 
fighters in the family, Gerald, and that’s final." 

“But I don’t want to marry Bill Hatch!" cried Jerry. 
“Mother, I love his sister, and I earnestly hope you " 

“It’s absurd, Gerald," interrupted Mrs. Musgrave. 
“The sister of a prize fighter! How can you think of 
such a thing!" 

“That’s what Bill Hatch wants to know! He thinks 
Dixie is too good for me!" 

“The insolent ruffian !" 

“I punched him in the jaw for luck, tool He ain’t 
got a thing on me!" 

“Gerald, you are disgraceful! How do you tolerate 
that Hatch fellow? I must tell your father he’s corrupt- 
ing your taste, speech and manners. When he hears it’s 
the pugilist’s sister you wish to marry he’ll be wild!" 

But Mr. Musgrave, far from being wild, had difi?- 
culty in concealing traces of amusement. “Puppy love," 
he said to himself, and turned a stern face on Gerald who 
had always been his special pride and boast. 


322 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I can’t permit you to do anything of the sort, my 
boy,” he said with stately hnality. . ‘‘You cannot form 
anything but a crotchety attachment while enjoying an in- 
terval of insanity. Having the girl’s brother for a crony 
was bad enough, but you shall not go further. I should 
disinherit you, Gerald, the moment you gave wiat girl 
your name.” 

Once more Jerrry was as meek as the oft-quoted 
lamb, but he put the matter up to Dixie Hatch very 
bluntly that evening in the little parlor of her home. 

^‘Dixie,” he said solemnly, “my parents have an idea 
I’d give you up if they said the word. They’re with Bill 
in the matter. What do you say — ^will you marry me?” 

“Jerry,” she replied calmly, “I may marry you in 
the course of a year or so, but I want to say fiankly that 
you will have to be earning your own living, bearing your 
share of the burdens of life, and — ” 

“I understand, Dixvie, and I mean to become more 
than an idler, but tell me this — do you love me? Will 
you wait for me?” 

“Until doomsday,” she whispered blushingly. 

Next morning Gerald Musgrave left home with some- 
thing like five dollars in his pockets. He hsfu a stinging 
consciousness that he had not done exactly right by his 
parents, but when he thought of Dixie Hatch’s avowed 
love for him his pulses hammered tumultuously and his 
whole body seemed to tingle with an unbelieveable de- 
light. A week later found him occupying the hall bed- 
room of an Arch street rooming house, in Philadelphia, 
with poverty not only a possibility but an ultimate proba- 
bility. 

His application to the Board of Education for a posi- 
tion as teacher developed the fact that, while possessed 
of the requisite knowledge, he lacked the ability to im- 
part the same to others. Another effort led him to the 
newspaper and magazine offices. In every instance he 
left the editor’s sanctum with the words “full staff,” “no 
vacancy,” “syndicates” and “noted writers” ringing in 


THE STAB OF SUSPICION 


323 


his ears. As a sample of his literary ability he presented 
one editor with what he believed to be a masterpiece of 
rhetoric. He scanned the manuscript and said, ^‘Why 
don’t you omit all this phraseology and write plain Eng- 
lish?” 

Continued unemployment had caused him to spend 
his last penny. He therefore swallowed his pride and 
answered an advertisement for a janitor. The job 
proved to be one of those where the less a man knows 
the better he can do the work. The following day found 
Jerry Musgrave, the pride of his parents and the hope of 
Dixie Hatch, scrubbing floors and washing windows with 
all the good grace at his command. 

Beyond the fact that the work was t^isuccessiul 
Jerry had no fault to And. It was rather the lack of 
a social side to his life that gave him cause for ans^iety. 
True, other janitors and porters in the neighborhood 
were perfectly willing to be friendly, but it was some 
time before Jerrry met their advances half way. And 
then he selected for a particular but by no means con- 
fidential friend a husky young Irishman by tne name of 
Pat Brady. 

In his own station of life Pat was considered a pat- 
tern of sobriety, deference and capability. ' He maae 
boxing a source of revenue of evenings and often 
donned the gloves with Jerrry, who, in the absence of 
other recreation, came to enjoy and excel at the game. 
Brady was a squat, bull-necked man with the strength of 
a gorilla and the blind courage of a rhinocerous. He 
was consistently, repulsively truthful. 

“You make me think of a lazy ball player,” he told 
Jerry. “You don’t move as if you were getting any- 
where until a hit is needed. And then you produce. If 
you say so. I’ll get you a bout at the Starlight Athletic 
Club after you’ve learned a little more, but^ I warn you 
that you can’t loaf in a six-round bout in this city with- 
out losing the decision and popularity.” 


324 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I won’t be in any hurry, Pat,” said Jerry, gooQ- 
naturedly. “I’ve loafed all my life up to now, and it 
will be some weeks before I get all my disused muscles 
into play. I’m too soft for the boxing game.” 

This was proved a lew months later when, urged by 
Brady, he entered the ring with another preliminary 
boxer, and lost the newspaper decision and two teeth. 
Pat saw that he received ten dollars for his Hrst engage- 
ment and smilingly promised him a better bout later on. 

“The fellow you met,” said Pat earnestly, “happened 
to be going good, though he’s seldom in condition. The 
matchmaker liked the game fight you put up and there 
will be easier game for you next time. The man who 
beat you had over twenty pounds on you and the benefit 
of twelve years’ experience.” 

“It’s honest money, Pat,” said Jerry, “and as that 
is the kind I’m looking for I’ll try again. 

Very, shortly thereafter Jerry made his second ap- 
pearance in the roped arena. He won with' ridiculous 
case, and then piled up four clean-cut victories in succes- 
sion, concluding with a victory over the man who had 
beaten him in his first bout. The newspapers said he was 
entitled to a match with Young Bodder, the local light- 
weight champion, and were not backward' about saying 
that he stood more than a fair chance of winning,. Pat 
Brady was violently positive of it. 

“You can beat this Bodder person, Jerry, • ne said 
enthusiastically. “He’ll be a mark for your left jab. 
But now that you’ve got something of a reputation make 
them pay you what you’re worth. Get what you’re 
worth and not a cent less. You’re a good attraction now 
and they will bid pretty high for you.” 

The boxing promoters came after Jerry for his low- 
est figure to meet Young Bodder. Jerry had to gasp at 
his own audacity when he named it. He almost collapsed 
when it was instantly accepted.. 


THE STAB OF SUSPICION 


325 


Young Bodder was his first knockout victim, and in 
a letter to Dixie Hatch he described his achievement in 
these words: > 

“Well, I’m a regular bruiser at last! I have knocked 
a man into the land of dreams for the requisite ten sec- 
onds. You asked me to describe the battle, and I’m going 
to try. For two rounds there was little to pick between 
us. The third round saw a turn in the tide — against me. 
Bodder hit me at will and had the blood spurting from 
my mouth. I was so bewildered I missed almost every 
punch I started. In the fourth he began to roll up a lead 
that seemed certain to clinch a victory. I was dazzled 
and mystified at his continuous change of pace, but I 
never stopped throwing by hardest punches at the shadow 
that danced before me. Two rights to the face puffed 
my eye till I could hardly see, and his left played on my 
ribs like a hose. I was desperate in the fifth. We 
fought for a minute and a half with Bodder still forging 
ahead, when I backed him into a neutral corner and be- 
g'an a shower of swings. He slipped away from me, but 
I chased him into his own comer and up against the 
ropes. He caught and held my right with both hands and 
I whipped my left to his jaw. It landed like a rifle bul- 
let and he began to totter. His hands fell to his sides 
and he swayed drunkenly. It was then I unloaded 
everything I had. I had been in the hunt and only tasted 
leather from the first bell. It was the under dog on top 
at last, and I went at it like a caveman. A dozen times 
my fists beat a tattoo on his jaw and still ne did not 
crumple. Then, heeding the shouted advice of my 
friend and second, Pat Brady, I deliberately set myself 
and let go my right, and he plunged face downward to 
the floor The adage of the ring holds that fighters who 
so fall never get up. I believe Bodder was out at the 
count of seven, but in some inexplicable manner he 
struggled to his feet, his hands dangling at his sides and 
a sickly smile on his swollen face. He was helpless. I 
couldn’t hit him again and turned to the referee, who 
mercifully waved him to his comer. Dixie, I think I have 
fought my last fight. I have made many new friends by 
this victory, but I cannot forget that I battered and beat 
down a brave fellow whom all agree gave one of the 
greatest exhibitions of gameness ever seen in a ring. I 
guess I’m through as a boxer.” 

Pat Brady heard Jerry’s decision to quit the ring 
with a huge guffaw. 


326 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Man, you’re batty!” he cried. “You’ve made the 
name of Jerry Dalton worth a fat purse any day in the 
week. I’m going to sign you up for a bout with Kid 
Gardner next month, and then we’ll go right after the 
new champion, Denny Burke.” 

Gardner disposed of, it was comparatively easy to 
get the match with the champion, and then the world 
looked bigger than ever to Jerry because there was more 
to be done in it. Fame and a foretaste of fortune was 
his when he wrote Dixie of the great news; only to be 
succeeded by gloom as he read these lines from the girl 
he loved: 

“I can’t rejoice at the tidings your letters contained, 
dear, because Bill Hatch has been transformed into a 
handsome, gentle and affectionate boy. I almost cried 
when I saw him kiss mother the other day and help her 
clean our little parlor. He has bought her a beautiful 
home in a fashionable neighborhood — in fact. Just a 
square away from your old home, Jerry — and he radiates 
right living and right thinking. You wouldn’t know him. 
His courtesy belongs to the age of the tallow dip and the 
ox team. Jerry, dear, I thought you knew that he was 
Denny Burke!” 

J erry went to Pat Brady with corrugated brow. 

“Pat, he said curtly, “this Denny Burke is an old 
pal of mine — ^his right name is Bill Hatch.” 

“Sure it is,” grinned Pat Brady. “Everybody knows 
that. But what’s the difference anyhow? Your name 
isn’t Dalton, and as for this fellow being a pal, why that 
makes it all the better. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.” 

With a warning gesture, Jerry bade him hush. 

“Don’t say anything about Bill that sounds shady,” 
he said tartly. “He’s as straight as a string and a credit 
to the game. Don’t ever forget it if you want to retain 
my friendship.” 

Then he sat down and wrote Dixie Hatch a long, de- 
jected letter which concluded something after this 
fashion : 

“I don’t want to fight, Dixie, if Bill is to be my op- 
ponent. When I think of meeting him in the ring my 


THE STAB OP SUSPICION 


327 


courage flows from me like blood from an opened vein. 
He is still my first hero without a fault that isn’t a virtue 
overdrawn.” 

Three days later, as Jerry was preparing to leave the 
city, he had a visitor in the person of Bill Hatch. The 
champion looked bigger and brawnier, and his voice was 
softer and his manner not so abrupt, but in all other re- 
spects he was the same old Bill. 

“Jerry!” he cried delightedly, and for a full two 
minutes stood grasping the hand and looking happily into 
the eyes of the man the sporting world had selected to 
topple him from his throne. 

“Bill,” managed Jerry, after a gulping pause, “I’m 
mighty glad to see you. How are you, old boy?” 

“Fine — never better! I’m tickled to see you look- 
ing so fit. Holy smokes, but you’ve filled out some!” 

“Have I? Well, you haven’t shrunk any yourself, 
Bill. Seen Dix lately?” 

“She sent me here, Jerry, to fix this fight business,” 
and Bill’s voice, deep and level, did not change. “She 
thinks that if we fight we’ll be chased out of the country 
as a pair of fakirs. We’re both getting a lot of press 
notices, you know, and some of the wise guys are start- 
ing that brother-in-law song. Back in Beaver they are 
just getting hep to who Jerry Dalton really is. I’m go- 
ing to retire as the only undefeated champion, and let 
them all go fish!” 

“I’ve already retired. Bill,” averred Jerry, with 
shining eyes. “I don’t relish the idea of fighting you.” 

“No, and I don’t like the notion, either. But you’ve 
got to stay in — you’re the challenger. I’ll take to cover, 
Jerry. My pile is made, and you have your^ to get. 
I’m out of the game for good.” 

“Nothing like it!” cried Jerry. “They’ll say you 
run out of the match!” 

“The same goes for you, Jerry, if you don’t fight me. . 
You challenged me for the title and you can’t quit cold.” 


328 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Nobody ever made me quit, hot or cold.’^ Jerry’s 
eyes flashed with the words he uttered, but he quickly 
cooled off. “And you haven’t a record for flunking. 
Bill. It isn’t a question of being quitters; I never was 
afraid of you, and I couldn’t fear you now if 1 wanted 
to, but ” 

“Then fight me, Jerry, and you can’t lose!” 

“What’s that?” Jerry flicked the champion with a 
glance like the snap of a whip. “What fto you mean. 
Bill?” 

“Just what I said. If you enter the ring with me, 
you can’t lose. That’s plain English.” 

“Too damned plain. Bill!” Jerry doubled^ his fists 
and glared savagely, “I’m not a crook, and you can’t 
come here and get me to fix a fight. Maybe I didn’t get 
you right. Bill — maybe I was too quick. Surely you 
don’t take me for a crook.” 

Bill Hatch’s voice was husky and his eyes averted 
when he answered: 

“For Dixie’s sake — for old time’s sake, Jerry! — I’m 
willing to lay down to you. It’s the only way you can 
win the crown, and as I’ve made my pile I don't — well, I 
don’t need the money.” 

“Neither do I. I don’t need dirty money! I’ll 
never touch a crooked cent. You are asking me to be a 
thief. I thought you were square. Bill. You’re a crook! 
You’re a thief!” The short, quick sentences fell on the 
champion’s ears like blows. “I was never more sur^ 
prised in my life. I thought I knew you, Bill Hatch, and 
I find I don’t. Speak up and be a man; you didn’t mean 
what you just said. What did you mean. Bill?” 

“You got me right the first time,” said the champion, 
wetting his lips with his tongue. “This is your chance 
to grab the title, Jerry, for I’ll lay down to you. It's no- 
body’s business but my own, and I don’t want a cent for 
flopping.” 

“And you won’t get a cent out of me!" cried Jerry 
furiously. “Do you think you have to lay down to me — 


THE STAB OF SUSPICION 


329 


do you? Don’t you think I have a chance? Would you 
rob the friends who would wager their last penny on 
you and think nothing of it?” 

Bill Hatch shifted his weight from one foot to the 
other. 

“You don’t understand me, Jerry.” 

“Yes, but you don’t understand me, you crook! 
You don’t have to lay down to me, and I’m going to climb 
into the ring with you, too. But the fight is going to be 
on the level, and if you try to fake a knockout I’ll de- 
nounce you from the ring. I guess that’s about all I 
have to say to you.” 

“Thanks, Jerry,” said the champion, and there was a 
quality in his voice that made the challenger look at him 
in surprise. “Good-bye — till we meet again. And may 
the best man win !” 

Jerry hunted up Pat Brady at once. 

“Pat, he said swiftly, “I just had a talk with the 
other side. I’m going to take the title away from the 
Dennis-Burke-Bill-Hatch combination, but tell our friends 
not to bet. Pat, how can you tell when a man is faking 
a knockout?” 

Pat Brady looked his astonishment as he replied : 
“Well, there are some real artists in the game which you 
can never detect.” 

Jerry bit his lips as the blood leaped to his face. 

“Pat,” he said wildly, “for a while I was thinking of 
becoming a real artist !” 

On the day Jerry started training for his fight with 
Bill Hatch the latter wrote to his sister as follows: 

“I’m not his hero any more, Dixie girl, and if he 
ever dreamed of quitting to me for old sake’s sake, or 
just because of you, dear girl, he has forgotten all about 
it now. I talked the'fighting spirit into the poor kid, and 
I know he’ll hand me the best he’s got in the shop. 
Honest, Dixie, I thought of laying down to him before 
you suspected him of such a thing, but I don’t think I’d 
want to lose Jerry’s respect and so my last fight will be 
strictly on its merits. As I said to him when I left, may 
the best man win, for the loser’s end is big enough for 


330 


RING AND DIAMOND 


me if I have to take it, only I didn’t say nothing about 
that to Jerry.” 

Contrary to expectations, the battle for the cham- 
pionship was conspicuous for its slugging brevity. Cham- 
pion and challenger stood toe to toe for one round and 
slammed each other with everything they had. Punch 
drunk, they were reeling and staggering around the ring 
when the gong sent them to their corners amid terrific 
applause. Came the second round — and the finish! 

Jerry and Bill, ignoring science, started right swings 
with every ounce of their strength behind tnem. And 
the blows landed at the same time on each other’s jaw. 
They pitched at each other, their heads knocking, and 
crashed to the floor. 

“A double knockout!” shrieked the audience, and 
the referee excitedly started to count. 

Bill Hatch lay flat on his face near the center of the 
ring; Jerry had rolled almost out of the ring in his own 
comer. He was on his back, his eyes rolling, arms and 
legs rigid when Pat Brady made his way to him. 

From out of that yeasty mass of frenzied fight fans, 
high and clear above the inferno of sound, came the 
voice of George Dinwood Musgrave in agonized entreaty: 

“Get up, get up! Pm here, Gerald, get up!” 

The ribald shout of laughter that greeted this out- 
burst of an overwrought parent had not died away when 
Jerry, with a convulsive movement ol the limbs, snapped 
bolt upright, grabbed the ropes, and just as the referee 
reached the count of “Nine!” pulled himself to his feet, 
where he stood swaying until the amazed official counted 
“Ten — and out!” Then he toppled to the floor again, 
while the referee, his voice quivering with excitement, 
gave him the verdict on a knockout. 

Among the first in the cheering mob that surged up 
to the ringside to greet the new champion was a well- 
groomed, gray-haired man with a patrician face, who 
seized and wrung the good right hand of Pat Brady as if 
the latter were a long-lost brother. 


THE STAB OF SUSPICION 


331 


“He's my son !” he chortled. “He's my ooy, sir, and 
he heard his old dad calling for him to get up !" 

Pat didn't speak until Jerry asked him about the 
gash in his leg when they reached the dressing room. 
Then he hung his head and an expression of amusement 
came across his face. 

“ 'Twas me, Jerry," he confessed. “I thought you 
were faking and I jabbed you in the leg with me pen- 
knife, and up you got in time to get crowned champion of 
the world!" 

“Stick me again, Pat," said the new champion. “I 
must be dreaming!" 


—7 


> . : \ ■ 


'k. 




.• I 






• « I 





Going the Limit 


A stalwart, cleam-limbed young man witn suitcase in 
his right hand and overcoat thrown over his left arm tore 
up the flight of stairs that led to the big train-shed. For 
the purposes of speed and convenience, he was using the 
skip-step system. Gaining the top, he came to a full 
stop for a second, gave the signs over the gates to the 
trains a sweeping glance and then started off in the direc- 
tion of the New York express. A lean, wiry, ferret-eyed 
young man darted after him and caugth him by the arm. 

“You seem to be in a hurry, lieutenant,*^ said he 
with a great attempt at humor. 

“I wouldn’t be if they didn’t start those New York 
trains on time. I see I have two minutes yet. Just 
time enought to tell you his: You may think I’m cheating 
in these civilians, but I’m not. I’m out of the service 
now, so don’t call me lieutenant. I’m on my way home, 
and if I miss that train I’ll never forgive you !” 

The ex-lieutenant dropped his suitcase iof a second 
and extended his right. And the reporter shook hands 
with Dick Crawford, lightweight champion of the 
world. 

“Who will be your first opponent, Mr. Crawford?” 

“Tom Lacy — I promised him before the war? 
Here’s my train ! Good-by !” 

“Good-by! And many thanks for the Interview.” 

Smiling at the reporter’s description of tnis brief 
exchange of words, Dick Crawford climbed aboard his 
train, and six hours later stood on the steps oi nls modest 
little home. He opened the door softly and went in. 
His father rose from his chair as he entered. He was a 


334 


RING AND DIAMOND 


large man with a frank, open face, florid complexion and 
whiskers that had once been red but were now roned with 
gray. 

“Richard, me fine boy!” he cried. “Welcome home! 
We^re proud as the divil of you, all of us. You’re look- 
ing fit as a fiddle !” 

“And feeling the same dad! Hello sis! Mother!” 

He kissed the sister that came running in from an- 
other room and cailght his moist-eyed mother to his 
breast in a bear-like hug. After that first greeting he 
sat down, while they gathered about him, and he told 
about France and showed his war cross. 

A certain uneasiness in his manner did not escape his 
mother’s keen eye. 

“You can tell us all you know later, Richard,” she 
said kindly. “Just now, Ruth Cameron must be longing 
for a glimpse of you. You’re excused.” 

Dick Crawford got to his feet blushing like a school- 
boy. “Well, if you want to get rid of me,” he said in 
tones of simulated vexation, “I’ll trot along, isiice way 
to chase a fellow when he hasn’t been home for an age. 
But you’re not rid of me, let me tell you. I’m coming 
back in time for that supper I smell cooking in the 
kitchen.” 

His father stepped outside the door with him and 
made a gesture of silence. 

“Dick,” he whispered, looking anxiously at the 
closed door, “I want you to do me a very great favor. 
Don’t fight Tom Lacy !” 

“Why, dad, that’s the one man I want to fight.” 

“Yes, yes, I know all about that. I know you can 
lick him with one hand tied behind you, too. But all the 
same I wish you’d pass him up for — for a few months 
anyhow. It means a whole lot to me, boy.” 

“It what? What are you talking about, dad? How 
can it mean anything to you? What difference does it 
make whether I fight Lacy or not? He’s entitled to a 


GOING THE LIMIT 


335 


bout. I promised him the next chance at the title be- 
fore I enlisted.” 

“Richard, that lad’s father worked with me — ^we 
were old friends.” He paused and cleared his throat 
very softly. “We are friends today, Richard, and I can’t 
have Mike Lacy’s feelings hurt any. I stood up for him 
when he first came to our gang and carried his hod of 
bricks. I got him in right with the crowd, who never 
could get along with a thinking man. They were a hard 
lot, Richard. 

“I know it,” smiled Dick, “and from what they tell 
me, you were the hardest of the lot. A lot of old folks 
have told me that Dan Crawford was never made to bite 
the dust as long as he carried a hod. Of course, now that 
you’re superintendent for Collms and Walker, you let 
your son do the scrapping for the family.’” 

“And can’t you do it, though!” cried tne proud old 
man, forgetting discretion in an access of enthusiasm. 
“Fourteen knockouts and never a boy staying the limit 
with you since you became the champion! Why shouldn’t 
you do the fighting for the family, I’d like to know?” 

“So would I, dad! So, why ask me not to fight Tom 
Lacy?” 

“As a favor, lad, that I can’t exactly explain to you 
now. It will mean nothing against you. There’s a few 
who think he’d have a chance, anyhow. You can say you 
won’t fight for six months; you’re entitled to that much 
rest. The public won’t blame you, lad. There, now; 
that’s settled. You won’t fight Tom Lacy, will you? 
The public won’t expect it, and you’ll say nothing to the 
papers.” 

“I’ve already told the papers I’d meet Lacy, dad. A 
reporter collared me at the railroad station. What’s the 
difference, anyway?” Dick looked nettled and rammed 
his hands into the pockets of his coat. “I’ve boxed bet- 
ter men than Tom Lacy in the Army, and I’ll wager every 
cent I own that he won’t stay the limit! That’s how I 
feel about it, dad.” 


336 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“All right, lad, all right!” said old Dan Crawford 
nervously. Footsteps inside the house were approaching 
the door. “I only thought, hoy, that you could maybe 
help ” 

The door opened and he spun round with a nervous 
jump. “Coming, mother!” he called to his wrfe. “Won’t 
hold him another minute ! Be off with you, Richard 
Crawford, before I give you the help of me foot. A line 
one, you, to keep a poor girl waiting like this.” 

Dick’s visit to Ruth Cameron was brief, but delightful. 
The young lady did not press him to stay, but her beha- 
vior betokened a desire to have him linger longer. Dick, 
however, had a most unromantic appetite. 

“Promised mother I’d be home for supper,” he said, 
making ready to depart. “I’ll be right over after I’ve 
grubbed.” 

“Dick,” purred Ruth, holding him by the coat lapels 
and gazing at a restless little slipper that prodded the 
fringe of a rug, “I wish you would tell your father 
that you won’t fight Tom Lacy.” 

The eyes of the young champion widened and nar- 
rowed as quickly. 

“How’s that?” 

'“Rlease, Dick, for my sake! Tell your father you 
won’t fight Tom Lacy.” 

“What have you got to do with Tom Lacy or my 
father, Ruth? Why shouldn’t I fight Tom Lacy as well 
as any other man?” Dick was conscious of an increasing 
warmth in his face and voice as he spoke. “What’s in the 
air? Has Tom Lacy developed into a man-killer since 
I’ve been gone? Do my friends think I have no show 
with him. Dad asked me the same thing, Ruth. What’s 
it mean?” 

“Why, nothing, Dick, nothing at all,” Ruth smoothed 
her hair with a nervous palm. “Only I think you owe 
the old gentleman a great deal, and I know it would bring 
him joy if you refused to fight Tom Lacy. Dick, if you 


GOING THE LIMIT 


337 


fight Tom Lacy, nothing could make you — er — ^make you 
ease up on him?” 

“Great fishcakes, Ruth, what are you driving at? Is 
there a scheme on to fix me? Are you and Dad in the 
deal to reach me?” 

“Listen, Dick, we only ” 

“Because I’m telling you what I’ll tell my father and 
the world : I’m fair with the public all the time, and if I 
can knock a man out I’ll knock him out, and all the money 
in the world ” 

“Listen, Dick; nobody wants you to be dishonest, but 
if you are determined to figth Tom Lacey you must not 
knock him out. It would be better hot to fight him at 
all, but if you are resolved to enter the ring with him 
then you must let him stay the limit!” 

“What are you saying, girl?” Dick’s voice was harsh 
and stem; the blood had ebbed from his face and left it 
chalk white. “You are asking me to turn crook, do you 
realize that? I’ve never fought a bout that wasn’t 
strictly on the level; all the fans know that. Meii bet on 
my ability to finish a man in a certain number of rounds. 
They know what I can do, and they bet their money on 
their knowledge of my skill and that of my opponent. 
This gentleman boxer, Mr. Tom Lacy, was made for me. 
He’s the amateur champion, and he’s conceited enough to 
think he stands a charfce with me. I promised him a 
bout before I went away. Now that I’m back he’ll get it. 
And you can take it from me, if it’s in the wood I’ll finish 
him inside the limit! If you have any bets down and 
want my private opinion. I’ll say Mr. Lacy will last as 
long as a snowball on a red hot stove !” 

“But, Dick, can’t you understand that there might 
be some one concerned who would lose terribly in repu- 
tation — and everything like that! Can’t you see that 
it wouldn’t be very awTul if you permitted Mr. Lacy 


“That’s enough!” Dick’s voice became rasping 
and he actually trembled. “I don’t know what sort of 


338 


RING AND DIAMOND 


scheme there is on foot to get this fellow Lacy a reputa- 
tion, but I’ll not be a party to it. You and my dad are 
in on this thing, whatever it is, but much as I love you 
both I’ll tell you once and for all that there’s no power 
on earth that can make me work crooked in the ring!” 
and his agitation passed away like the vibration of molten 
iron when it trembles for the last time before it be- 
comes solid for ever. 

“Very well, Dick; I believe you.” She measured 
him with a look, deliberate and frank. “Tell your father 
that I said he should tell you all. Then you will under- 
stand.” 

After supper that evening Dick Crawford took his 
father up to his room and carefully closed and locked 
the door. 

“Now, dad,” he said tenderly, pushing the old man 
down in a comfortable chair and handing him a cigar, 
“I’m ready for the story. Ruth told me to tell you that 
it was time to tell all. Let’s have it.” 

For a second or two his father could do nothing but 
fight with his emotions; then, his face settled into lines of 
weariness, almost of pain, he told his story. 

“Richard, me lad,” he began in a quavering voice 
that grew stronger as he proceeded, “five years ago, 
when I was cleaned out almost by the failure of the silk 
mills, Mike Lacy gave me a check for a thousand dollars. 
I had started to buy his bricks then, and we — that’s 
Collins & Walker — have been using his bricks ever 
since. At first they were better than any others, but 
when he let them drop in grade I still gave him the benefit 
of a doubt. He advanced his price and made me take 
inferior stuff. I say made me, for every time I told him 
that my firm would have to make a change he reminded 
me that the check, with my signature on the back, was 
likely to turn up. And what would become of me, lad, 
if Collins & Walker saw that check with their buyer’s 
indorsement at just the date when I began to buy 
Lacy’s bricks? He holds that check over me, and I keep 


GOING THE LIMIT 


339 


on buying his goods when his competitors offer a superior 
article at a reduced figure. The firm has been wondering 
more than a year now, and the building inspector criti- 
cised a row of our houses last week and blamed the 
bricks^ — Lacy’s bricks. It can’t go on much longer; the 
firm is mad.” 

“Go on, dad,” said Dick tensely. His face was white, 
his jaw set, his eyes as steady and hard as flint. “What 
does your old friend, Mike Lacy, expect of you?” 

“He expects me to earn that cancelled check by hav- 
ing you box Tom Lacy and letting him stay — if he does 
not put you out!” 

“I see! And does Tom Lacy know this?” • 

“I think he does, lad. Mike’s boy is the apple of his 
eye ; his whole heart and soul is in the boy. He lives 
only to advance the pleasure and gratify the whims of 
Tommy, and just now Tommy is wishful for fame as a 
boxer. Tommy told him that his ambition was to meet 
you and not kiss the canvas. Mike sent for me. ‘That 
checks is yours, Dan,’ sez he, ‘if my boy can go the limit 
with the champion. And you can buy your brick where 
you d — n please.’ There you have the story, lad — ^the 
story of your father’s shame, no less.” 

“Cheer up, dad!” cried Dick heartily. “A lot of 
things not your fault has put you where you are. I’m 
going to fix the matter tomorrow morning. Don’t let it 
worry you any longer. You look as if you had mur- 
dered some one. I’ll talk things over with Ruth tonight.” 

“What do you think of doing, Dick?” asked Ruth, 
when he had acquainted her with his intention of adjust- 
ing the affair on the morrow. “It won’t do for your 
father to suffer the disgrace; it will kill him sure.” 

“There won’t be any disgrace to it,” he answered 
confidently. “I ought to have been told about it before. 
I could have fixed it in a jiffy.” 

But Dick Crawford little knew the character of the 
man he had to deal with, for the next morning when he 
called at the office of Michael Lacy he met with a vivid 


340 


RING AND DIAMOND 


and unexpected setback. Michael Lacy, squat of build, 
beetle-browed, snub-nosed and furtive looking, received 
him with scant ceremony in a room that was an abortive 
attempt to successfully combine a parlor and a living- 
room, and which had all the gaucheries of the former, 
accompanied by the threadbare disorder of the latter. 

“What’s your business, young fellow?” he growled. 
“You said it was private, or I wouldn’t have let them 
send you back here. Speak up; time’s valuable.” 

“Mr. Lacy, here’s cold cash for that check of my 
father’s, plus the interest at 6 per cent.” 

“Who are you?” 

“Richard Crawford.” 

“Well, Richard Crawford,” came the answer, with a 
broad Cheshire cat-like smile, “you can put your money 
back in your pocket. You father’s check will stay in my 
safe unless Tommy is treated in the right way when you 
two have your little argument with the gloves.” 

Dick was white .with helpless anger. 

“Don’t tell me that you are going to keep that check 
when I have your money here for you!” 

“That’s what I’m telling you, young fellow. I’ll 
send that check to your dad after the boxing match — un- 
less you knock my Tommy out!” 

“Do you know that you are trying to make a crook 
out of me?” 

“Is that so? Well, your father can give you a few 
points about the game, young fellow.” 

Dick, raging inwardly, went straight to Jerry Thatch- 
er, his manager and chief second. 

“Jerry,” he barked, “sign up with the Lacy people 
for a fight. We’ll start training tomorrow.” 

The following evening he called on Ruth Cameron. 

“Well, I’ve started training,” he announced, “Have 
you read the papers?” 

“Have I read the papers?” she repeated, looking at 
him shrewdly. “What has given you the idea that I 
can’t read?” 


GOING THE LIMIT 


341 


*‘If you’ve read them, you know that Tom Lacy and 
his backers are wagering all kinds of money that he’ll go 
the limit. Fine, ain’t it?” His voice was husky with ex- 
citement. “All the sure-thing gamblers in the country 
are getting the tip that Dick Crawford’s been fixed. A 
pie-faced amateur champion is going to try his level best 
to knock my block off, and at the same time he* can assure 
his friends that they can safely wager the family plate 
he’ll be there or thereabouts when the smoke of the 
battle clears away. What am I going to say to my 
friends? Tell me that! When they ask me, as they will, 
‘Are you going to try, Dick?’ shall I answer like a crook, 
‘Sure!’ and then lay down to the son of a bigger crook? 
Because my father has — oh, what’s the use of talking?” 

“Don’t you love me Dick?” Ruth talked mildly in a 
quiet, pacific tone. “You don’t want to work yourself up 
like this. Take things calmly. Daddy Crawford isn’t to 
blame, and when he’s out of this hole ” 

“And I’m a crook who has sold out the public and his 
friends. Go on!” 

“Look at me, Dick!” And she was something to 
look at! Her cheeks rivaled the petals of a rose, her 
dark eyes glowed with unmasked affection, and behind 
her rich red lips her teeth glistened like pearls. “I would 
do anything for your dear old dad — and so will you! 
Fortune never favored him with aught but a nod, and it 
was the nod of one who gathers up her skirts as she 
throws alms to a beggar. He has lived and labored for 
you, and in you he lives and adores; but he has a pride 
that will never survive the blow Michael Lacy can deal. 
He would lay down his life for you without an instant’s 
hesitation. You cannot — I know you will not ” 

“Wait, Ruth!” said Dick, with a drawn sort of a 
smile. “You don’t have to plead for my father; my heart 
pleads for him night and day. 1 love him — love him for 
the human weaknesses he shows and for the very enemies 
he has made. The man who speaks ill of my fathr be- 
fore me will bo^ getting his mail at the hospital for a gang 


342 


RING AND DIAMOND 


of days, believe me. I’ll do anytihnf; in the worhl for my 
father except become a crook! I want to help him. I 
want to save him the disgrace that threatens him, nut I’ll 
choke my conscience to do it. I’m just a plain, ordinary 
boxer, girlie, but I’ve always been on the square, and by 
the living jingo, not even you could make me turn 
crook!” 

‘‘Oh, Dick, I’m proud of you!” cried Ruth. “I 
wouldn’t want you to be anything but honest, but — ” 
she was sobbing now — “but it will kill dear old Daddy 
Crawford !” 

On the night of the fight between Crawford and 
Lacy old Dan refused to attend the big show. Dick and 
Jerry Thatcher tried to change his determination to re- 
main at home, but he was immovable. 

“I’ll be better off here at home, boys,” he said. 
“Don’t bother about me. I can stroll down to the corner 
and get the news over the ticker if I feel like it, but I 
kinda think the excitemr^nt would be too much for me. 
Dick, I’ve got to tell you something I meant to tell you a 
week ago. That — that check business is all fixed up.” 
There was an odd, muffled note of emotion in his voice. 
“Don’t you think of your dad at all tonight. I’m ashamed 
that I asked you to — to dodge this fight, or let up on Tom 
Lacy for my sake. If you want to tickle your old father 
into a happy death, go at that Lacy boy tonight and whale 
h — 1 out of him! I’ll never die happy unless you knock 
him into kingdom come’” 

“And, dad, are you ready to face Collins & Walker 
and old Lacy’s check?” 

“That I am, boy! I was a coward long enough, 
wasn’t I? To think that I ever feared to face the results 
of me own folly. You should be ashamed to own me, 
so you should.” 

“Never that, dad, come what will! But win or lose, 
we’ll be on the square!” 

They shook hands fervently, and as Dick turned to 
go the old man followed after him a few steps to say: “I 


GOING THE LIMIT 


343 


have the old check in me desk, now, this minute, and 
I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Go in and win, and 
God bless you, me darling boy!” 

Jerry Thatcher looked at the pitifully weak and broken 
old fellow with a flash of approbation as he muttered to 
himself: “The old boy’s an ^a^vful bum liar, but he’s 
fooled Dick at that!” 

A few minutes past 11 o’clock that night a gleaming 
limousine purred up to the Crawford home and Michael 
Lacy jumped out. When Dan Crawford answered his 
ring in person he tendered him a piece of paper with 
these words: 

“I guess you know, Dan, I’m a man of me word. 
Here’s that check, and you can buy your bricks elsewhere. 
A bargain’s a bargain, but your boy didn’t have to come 
so close. If the public knew what we do they’d call him 
the greatest faker in the world!” 

Dan Crawford tottered into the house and sank into 
a chair. 

“He didn’t believe me!” he groaned. “He knew I 
was lying to him, and he’s turned crook to save me ! 
Richard, me boy, your father’s made a rogue of you !” 

It took Jerry Thatcher to convince him otherwise, at 
a later moment. At that precise instant, Jerry was bus- 
ily engaged rubbing the lightweight champion’s legs in 
the latter’s dressing room and hiding a grin. For the 
champion was peeved and spoke thusly: 

“Gee, Jerry, what was wrong withu me tonight? I 
hit that fellow with everything I had, but he simply 
wouldn’t go down. Have I lost my wallop. 

“Too anxious!” was Jerry’s sententious rejoinder. 
“You made the thing look like a fast fight, but Mr. Lacy 
wants no m.ore of your game, and said so before he left 
the ring. 

“I’ll admit I was too mad to see anything tonight,” 
said the champion disgustedly. “I hit that shadow boxer 
wherever I pleased, and I put everything I had into the 
punches. I noticed before the third round that my hands 


344 


RING AND DIAMOND 


were not working as smoothly as they should, but I 
thought I could work it off. I guess it was my off night!” 

But Dick Crawford, champion of the world, had an- 
other guess coming to him, for after he dressed and de- 
parted for home Jerry Thatcher dragged a pair of water- 
soaked leather pillows from beneath a chair and ad- 
dressed them in these words; ^ 

“Youse for the furnace when I get home, and I hope 
Miss Ruth never again asks me to switch in such big ba- 
bies! Eight ounces! Holy smoke, no wonder that dude 
stayed the limit!” 


a 


j 


aA Manufacturer 
of Champions 

Before Wetherell v/as hardly aware that he was in a 
regular boxing match, he stopped one of Delandy’s over- 
hand wallops and found himself rolling slowly on the 
rosined floor with the referee sowly counting him out. 
His manager, Dan Monroe, shouted something that was 
drowned in the roar of the audience baying for a record 
knockout. The arc lights overhead whirled and danced; 
the floor heaved and pitched as he clawed at it with his 
gloved hands. Then something wet splashed in his face, 
his brain cleared and cooled, the numbness vanished 
from his rigid limbs, and he reared to his knees, feeling 
as if blood instead of water was rolling from his ashen 
face. 

At the count of nine he staggered to his feet an,d fell 
into a clinch, frantically shaking his head to drive away 
the film that had formed over his eyes. Delaney tugged 
and tore 'and twisted in a frenzied effort to push him off 
and put over the finishing blow, but Wetherell would 
not be shaken off until he had* weathered the storm. As 
the seconds slipped past and the mist faded, he was able 
to look down into the startled face of Dan Monroe and 
smile reassuringly. The bell rang and he wabbled thank- 
fully to his comer. 

“All right, kid,” murmured Dan Monroe, sponging 
his face and chest. “You’ve shown you can take it and 
come through-y-now to get him. He gave you all he had 
and you’ve nothing to be afraid of. Beat this bird and 


346 


RING AND DIAMOND 


ril get you on with the champ. You’ve got the goods, 
kid, and you’ll he the next champion of the world.” 

Wetherell felt like saying that he had heard that be- 
fore, for he was weary unto extinction. Every muscle in 
his finely proportioned body seemed a tremble, and his 
head was again filled with queer noises that seemed to 
emanate from a little boiler factory located somewhere 
within his skull. He had gone very white, and for per- 
haps the first time in his life he was genuinely disgusted 
with the fight game. 

“Come on, kid!” implored Dan Monroe, pushing his 
wet hair back from his forehead and ^slapping him on the 
shoulder. “There’s the championship and a million bucks 
for you if you finish this bird. You can’t afford to lose, 
kid, you’ve come too far to lose! You won’t lose!” 

Wetherell’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth 
as he stumbled to his feet, but he managed an utterance. 

“I’ll win!” he said thickly, in tones that had eterni- 
ties of resolution in them. He was still groggy, and not 
too eager to renew hostilities. 

Delaney, on the other hand, leaped from his stool, 
wildly anxious to score a knockout. He swung right and 
left for the jaw, missed with bath, and drew off to take 
better aim. When he did so, Wetherell stuck his left in 
his face. He did it again and again, and yet again De- 
laney’s nose spouted blood, and a swelling began to ap- 
pear under his eye. Try as he would, he couldh’t evade 
that unerring left. In a helpless fury he saw Wetherell 
growing stronger, gaining confidence, boxing with his old 
snap and vim. He forced a clinch and -wrestled him to 
the floor. A.s Wetherell came up like a rubber ball he let 
lease with a hard right that spun Delaney around like a 
top. Then he swept in with lefts and rights that made 
him clinch for safety and brought the crowd to its feet 
with cries of “Put him out!” 

Dan Monroe hugged him as he came to his corner at 
the end of the round. 


A MANUFACTURER OF CHAMPIONS 


347 


“It’s all over, kid!” he chuckled. “Mr. Delaney is 
about to retire for the evening, and you’re delegated to 
put out the lights and tuck the covers in.” 

Wetherell had his voice, but he seemed not to relish 
the task that loomed ahead of him. 

“Can’t we do with the decision?”' he asked, his eyes 
roving to his opponent’s corner with quick compassion. 
“There’s only* two more rounds to go and ” 

“There’s the bell!” lied Dan Monroe glibly. “It 
can’t be done, kid! You’ve got to put him away or the 
Brock gang will say he won. He’s had you on the verge 
of sleep, and you can’t even it with points. Put him 
away! He^s got the lead as it is — "knock him for a goal 
if you want the Brock match! There goes the bell!” 

And this time it was the bell — and the end. Weth- 
erell released two fiery punches to win. He jabbed his 
tantalizing left to the mouth and as fast as a bolt of 
lightning followed with a crashing right to the jaw. De- 
laney fell on the fiat of his back as limp as a wet towel. 

Dan Monroe had the time of his life rescuing Weth- 
erell from the hands of enthusiastic fans. In the dress- 
ing-room he shed tears of joy. 

“Oh, kid, do you know what this means to me?” he 
half sobbed. “It means that I’ve a chance to square ac- 
counts with Champion Brock, the boy I took from the 
gutter and made a champ, and who turned me down flat 
after I had jockeyed him into the title. It means that 
Lew Grimmer, the famous promoter, will give me a bout 
with Brock and all the backing I want. Delaney was the 
only obstacle, and you removed him tonight.” 

Wetherell, gravely divesting himself of his trunks, 
seemed not in the least elated. 

“I can’t say I like the game, Dan,” he grumbled. 
“I feel sorry for Delaney, and if you are going to see 
Grimmer I think I’ll run around and see Del. He must 
be feeling pretty blue right now. Wonder if he’d feel 
sore if I slipped him a little change?” ^ 


848 


' RING AND DIAMOND 


“He got his for the. night’s work, kid,” laughed Dan 
Monroe. “Don’t start a war by offering him money. 
He’s taken care of all that he has made in the ring, and 
if he retires tonight I’ll say he’s fixed for life. And you 
will be in the same boat if you can win the champion- 
ship. We’ve been fighting :for shoestrings long enough.” 

“I guess we have been getting the short end, Dan.” 

Monroe’s face twisted in a snarl. 

“I’ve had seven lean years of it, kid, and it’s about 
time I squared things with the man who turned me 
down.” His words clicked like the snapping of a steel 
trap. ‘Ever since that bout in Glendair, when Brock 
won the championship from Tilden, I have been looking 
for a lightweight who would take the title from Brock. 
You are the man for the job. You have speed and stam- 
ina, carry a punch, and I’m telling you to your face you 
are one of the most graceful boxers I’ve ever seen. 
You’ll win he championship for me, and Brock will rue 
the day he gave me the double cross.” 

“That’s one man I want to beat,” said Wetherell 
“I don’t like the idea of knocking out nien like Delaney, 
who is square and game, but I know Brock is a crook, and 
an accidental champion. He never would give Tilden an- 
other fight.” 

“Good reason why, kid,” and a far-away look crept 
into Monroe’s eyes. “If Tilden could get Brock into the 
ring again he’d kill him. But when he retired he made it 
easy for the fake champ who dumped me — the man who 
made him what he is, the false alarm !” 

“Brock’s my meat,” said Wetherell, gayly. “When 
I’ve finished with him I’ll give the Tilden outfit a chance. 
Some people say Dick Tilden was jobbed.” 

“I was the one that was jobbed, kid, and don’t let 
anybody tell you any different. I spent my last cent on 
Brock, and he threw me aside like an old glove. Why, 
I fixed Tilden’s feet so that Brock could walk off with 
the title and then he dumped me!” 

\“How was that, Dan?” 


A MANUFACTURER OP CHAMPIONS 


349 


“Some day, kid, I’ll tell you the story. I’m off now 
to see Lew Grimmer.” 

Lew Grimmer knew a fighter when he saw one. He 
witnessed Wetherell’s decisive win over Delaney and 
had been properly impressed and duly perpared to hail a 
new champion. But he also knew Dan Monroe’s reputa- 
tion for trickery, so he wanted to make haste very cau- 
tiously. 

“Where did you find this kid, Dan?” he bluntly de- 
manded of Monroe, and the latter, seeing that equivoca- 
tion was neither useful nor likely to be deceiving, told 
the naked truth, much to his own astonishment. 

“He was boxing in an amateur tournament in a rube 
town when I first saw him,” he related, “and he tickled me 
to such an extent I put him up against some of the top- 
notchers the first crack off the bat. Do you know. Lew, 
he wouldn’t handle me at first, and when he fought The 
Clipper Kid he hadn’t the slightest idea of training. He 
made a dandy showing, and after the bout I noticed that 
he was rather weak, and made inquiries. I discovered, 
Lew, that the kid, being a little overweight,^ had been 
eating only one meal a day for two weeks so as to reduce. 
And Lew, so help me, he fought The Clipper a pretty 
draw on an empty stomach !” 

“The little son-of-a-gun !” was Lew’s admiring com- 
ment. “He knows better now, don’t he?” 

“He knows a lot of things now that he didn’t know 
then,” continued Monroe complacently. “He was calling 
himself Young Tilden, but I made him drop that name 
and started to bring him along under my management. 
Wetherell is his right name — Steve Wetherell — and be- 
cause it doesn’t sound like a real fighter’s name I decided 
to let him use it. My game is to let Brock think I’ve got 
a bloomer, but I’m telling you. Lew, straight from the 
heart, this kid could lick Dick Tilden and Larry Brock in 
the same ring the best day -either of them ever saw. 
He’s a wonder! And you saw his gameness and recuper- 
ating powers with Delaney. 


350 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I saw more than that,” smiled Lew Grimmer with a 
huge wink. “I saw you take a chance on having the kid 
disqualified iby soaking him in the eye with a wet sponge 
when Delaney dropped him for the count.” 

Foxy Dan Monroe rose from his chair and yawned 
ostentatiously. 

‘‘I’m going to manage a champ, old top,” he 
drawled, “and no little thing is going to stand in my 
way. If the referee didn’t see the sponge there’s no 
kick coming from anybody.” 

“Well,” said Grimmer judicially, “the Delaney folks 
might have a legitimate holler if the wet sponge really 
changed the result, which I don’t think it did. However, 
Dan, I must say that you take very long chances when 
you’re in a boy’s comer and are rather anxious for that 
boy to win. If you are in this Wetherell kid’s comer 
when he meets Brock — and I’ll see that it comes to pass — 
I want you to cut out >he tricks. I’ve looked the lad 
over, and I like his looks. That means that when he 
meets Larry Brock my money will be wagered against the 
champ, but I must have your assurance that you are going 
to work the kid on the level and won’t try any tricks. 
Did I hear you murmur?” 

“I’m insulted,” said Monroe banteringly, “deeply in- 
sulted, Lew, but just the same you may safely wager your 
family plate on Steve Wetherell. And I’ll not use any of 
my tricks, as you call ’em.” 

In boxing circles Dan Monroe had been known as the 
man with an endless grievance, but just as soon as ar- 
ticles of agreement for a fight between Larry Brock and 
Steve Wetherell were signed he went about as happy as 
the proverbial clam at high tide. He was forever bust- 
ling about from one place to another, hurrying hither and 
yon, stepping on the heels of time and marveling at the 
shortness of the day. He declared he would not accept 
one penny for Wetherell ’s services, and that all he 
wanted was transportation and an honest referee. He 
hoped to prove to Mr. Larry Brock’s entire satisfaction 


A MANUFACTURER OF CHAMPIONS 


351 


that it never paid to kick a live wire when it , is down. 
Should Wetherill lose he would quit the boxing game for 
good and all; but he made it a rule never to make allow- 
ances for impossible contingencies. 

In a quiet suburb of the big city, buried from the 
prying eyes of press aj;id public alike, Monroe pre- 
pared Wetherell for the fight of his career. And Steve 
showed himself to be a wonderfully improved boxer in all 
his training stunts. Perhaps the greatest change in him 
was his apparent desire to do things as soon as he got his 
sparring partners into the ring with him. Hitherto he 
had been prone to just go along easily until he got stung, 
but now he acted as though some one had hit him with a 
blackjack before the start of the bouts. 

“I’ll take the title from Brock, Dan,” he said time 
after time. “You tell nfe he won on a fluke, and I’m 
good enough to beat any fluke champion in the world.” 

“You can beat any real champion,” chortled Dan. 
“It really was a shame the way I kidded Dick Tilden into 
thinking we were out for the loser’s end. He didn’t 
train a minute, and I had Larry all ^imed. Besides, I 
promised that Larry wouldn’t do anything but take it 
easy and pave the way for a return bout, which was to 
be in dead earnest. Tilden was caught napping, and he 
can’t say a word against Brock, nor get another flght. 
And if I squealed ” 

“You would be driven out of the game,” finished 
Steve, with a nod of understanding. “Well, I hope Brock 
is at his best th'is time. I want to beat him so that he 
can’t have the shadow of an alibi. Dan, I can’t lose !” 

Dan smiled, happily and indulgently. Steve was 
confidence personified. His manner was not that of a 
man who thought he had an easy task ahead of him; his 
confidence was more in his manner than in what he said. 
His “I will” manner impressed Dan Monroe deeply. The 
foxy manager saw sweet revenge and immediate for- 
tune in the offing, and his ship coming home! Wetherell 
would be treated generously, of course, but he had ah 


352 


RING AND DIAMOND 


rea^y spent a pile of money on him, and for a time at 
least his earnings would go to reward the sure-fire 
judgment of his manager. When Dan spread his bread 
upon the waters he wanted it covered with honey and 
jam, 

“All I want, kid,'' he told Steve on numberless occa- 
sions, “is a chance to get back the coin IVe spent, and the 
opportunity to do business for a champion. I’ll make 
suckers out of some of these would-be wise guys, be- 
lieve me. You’ll stick to me — you’re that kind. And 
just watch the easy marks I get for you after you’ve 
copped the crown !” 

“I’ll win!” repeated Steve with dogged determina- 
tion. 

“I know you will!” cried Monroe. “There isn’t any 
wind in your blow. It’s all fist. You’re big enough for 
the job, and you can finish it. From now on, you can do 
the talking. I won’t keep a dog and bark myself.” 

“Maybe Brock will take it in his head to do some 
barking?” 

“He can’t say a word,” snarled Dan,. “Why, if my 
think tank hadn’t been in working order Tilden would have 
won in the seventh round. He saw he had been double- 
crossed and managed to fioor Brock. Larry was all but 
out, and another punch would have settled his hash. 
But your Uncle Daniel was on the job. kid, and while 
everybody stopped thinking I crept along the edge of the 
ring and yanked the bell string. All except the bewil- 
dered timekeeper thought it was the end of the round, 
and Larry came around all right and won the fight.’^ 

“Great work, Dan.” 

“Thanks, kid; I’ll say it was. But I pulled some- 
thing else, too, in that fight. I made Larry fight so as 
to keep Tilden away from his own comer as much as pos- 
sible. I didn’t v/ant Tilden to hear the advice shouted by 
his second, and he had to fight without any outskle help.” 


A MANUFACTURER OF CHAMPIONS 


353 


“The slickest ever!” applauded Steve. “With you 
in my corner the battle's won now, but for form's sake — 
and the gate receipts — we’ll go through with the fight.” 

But you can never tell what will happen in a boxing 
contest. Before the fight for the world’s championship 
had gone two rounds the smiling and confident challenger 
was punch drunk, reeling and staggering around the 
ring with leaden arms, bedlam of noises dinning in his 
ears. Brock, cool as an Alaskan glacier, calmly thudded 
home two more well-placed blows that sent Wetherell to 
the ropes, where he hung all but out. 

Dan Monroe was jumping up and down yelling 
“Foul Foul!” when Larry Brock walked over to the 
helpless Wetherill,measured him very carefully and shot 
a terrific right to his slack jaw. Every man in the build- 
ing expected Steve to topple to the floor unconscious, and 
Dan Monroe was on the verge of total collapse, when the 
miracle happened. 

Brock’s pile-driving smash snapped Steve erect, 
cleared his brain instantaneously, and sent him after the 
cocksure champion with blood in his eye. Left, right, 
left, right, he battered Brock, who fled before him in con- 
sternation. Driven into his own comer, the champion 
boxed wildly, pitifully, unable to comprehend or over- 
come the situation. 

The challenger would not be denied. He sunk his 
left into Brock’s stomach, and as the ajw dropped to meet 
the jerking knees, the deadly right crossed over. It was the 
end. Steve caught the limp form before it could hit the 
floor and carried the ex-champion to the waiting arms of 
his dismayed seconds. Then he turned to embrace a 
blond-haired youth who leaped into the ring ahead of the 
cheering mob that was rolling toward the ringside like a 
resistless tidal wave. 

Dan Monroe pushed his way between the ecstatic 
pair with an angry snarl. 


354 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“What are you horning in here for, Dick Tilden?’* 
he demanded. “I’m this kid’s manager, and you’re 
not going to get a match till I say the word.” 

“Well,” retorted the tblond youth merrily, “you’ve 
lost another champ, old fox. I’m this kid’s brother. 
Tell him, Steve!” . 

The new champion had a gleam in his eyes which 
Dan Monroe did not relish. 

“I tried to tell him in the beginning, Dick,” he said 
icily, “but he forced himself on me as manager and made 
me give up my right name. Then I saw a chance of 
settling your score, and I’ve been kidding him along ever 
since.” 

Dan Monroe was as white as milk and his lips were 

blue. 

“Dumped again!” he gasped. “What’ll I do now?” 

“Beat it, you crook!” commanded Dick Tilden 
sternly. “Here comes the mob and I feel a little speech 
coming on!” 


The Diving Venus 




No handsomer athlete than Wade Denston ever 
wielded the padded mitts. When he came out of the 
army he had passed three physical tests with a mark of 
100, He was 5 feet, 10 inches tall, as lithe as a panther, 
and looked every inch a natural fighting man. I was 
present the first time the reporters got hold of him. 

“They say you’re the acme of physical perfection?” 
their spokesman opened up. 

“Say, honestly, that’s bunk,” he blushed. 

“But you’re the only man in the regiment to meet 
every test, aren’t you?” 

He ran an efficient hand through his light hair, and 
slouched his shoulders a trifle so as not to look quite so 
perfect. The effort was futile. 

“Why pick on me?” he complained good-humoredly. 
“I don’t know why the surgeon, or whoever it was, should 
have mentioned my name at all. I don’t understand how 
there’s anything remarkable about me ” 

Indeed? Well, was he or was he not called the per- 
fect man by army doctors. “Oh, yes they have to kid 
somebody!” 

And didn’t his chest measure 3814 inches expanded, 
and 35 inches contracted? And didn’t he weigh 165 
pounds stripped? 

Denston sighed heavily and admitted the truth. He 
explained reluctantly that if he was in good physical con- 
dition — but of course he probably wasn’t — it might just 
possibly be because he went in for baseball and boxing, 
and riding and swimming. And tramping. And jump- 
ing. And basketball. And gym work. 


356 


RING AND DIAMOND 


They dragged fror him the admission that he had 
trounced everything his weight in the army, and his hith- 
erto concealed intention of taking up the manly art as a 
profession. That is where I showed my fine American 
fist, for I knew as well as they that enthusiastic experts 
had acclaimed this boy something of a miracle worker in 
the ring. In fact, his achievements had awakened rever- 
berant chords of prai.se from circles where the Sir Hu • 
berts of boxing sat encircled and enthroned. 

Fifteen minutes after the gentlemen of the press had 
departed I had Wade Denston’s signature to a two-year 
contract. If I do say it myself I ha^ something of a 
reputation as a fight impresario. Even my enemies — and 
I had a few — conceded my ability to get an even break 
for my man when it was impossible to annex an advan- 
tage. Denston apparently considered himself fortunate 
in that his path had been privileged to cross mine. 

I have said that the boy was handsome. In street 
clothes he was an extremely good-looking young fellow, 
straight as a young poplar and altogether high-bred look- 
ing. In rings togs he was an Apollo, a dazzling pink 
statue of graceful manhood. His pansy-blue eyes were 
steady and unafraid and refinement enveloped him as 
with a perfume. Some blighted ignoramus, seeing him in 
the ring for the first t'me and struck silly by his physical 
perfection, hoarsely entieated his roughneck friends to 
“Look at Venus!” 

The name stuck. Denston carried it into his fight 
with Jumbo Allen and added to it when he became The 
Diving Venus. He was a big hit with the crowd because 
he puzzled and amazed them. Like a woman’s beauty, 
his style was easier to distinguish than define. He was 
the very quintessence of speed and science. 

Early showing his superiority over his bulkier oppon- 
ent, Wade put him down for the count in the third 
round. Allen arose groggy. It looked like an easy con- 
quest for Wade, but Jumbo clumsily avoided him and 
rushed into a clinch. 


THE DIVING VENUS 


357 


The impetus sent Wade against the ropes. It hap- 
pened that the ring was equipped with only two ropes in- 
stead of three. Wade was pushed backward and vainly 
tried to catch one of the ropes. Jumbo caught the top 
rope, dug his feet into the rosined floor, and held. Wade 
spun dizzily on the outside edge of the ring, then dived 
headfirst to the ground, his head striking with terrific 
force. 

Although he hadn’t been struck by Jumbo, the ref- 
eree started counting and despite the protestations of my 
self and the dumbstruck audience, counted Wade out. It 
was five minutes before the boy revived. He complained 
of a sore jaw, but otherwise seemed little the worse for 
his unfortunate tumble. 

“A number of moons will wax before that happens 
again,” he said cheerily. “Get me Jumbo again.” His 
calmness was preternatural. 

As I might have expected, Jumbo Allen wasn’t eager 
for a return bout. All. the papers had declared that it 
was the flukiest kind of a victory, and none knew it better 
than he. Wade had betrayed subtle qualities too good to 
be overlooked, and critics whose judgment he deferred to 
had lost their voices singing the boy’s praises. 

I kept right afte^ Allen like a terrier worrying a 
cornered rat, and at last my efforts were crowned with 
success. Probably because there was no alternative. 
Jumbo agreed to meet Wade again, and our camp was 
jubilant. In our sight, Mr. Allen’s candidacy for first 
honors had already begun to make rapid stemway. ^ 

Never has any man taken a worse beating than Wade 
gave to Allen in the first two rounds of their second fight. 
Jumbo couldn’t lay a glove on the young marvel. He 
was quick as rumor and faster than thought. Jumbo was 
tottering on the verge of disaster, and there was a 
settled depression upon him. The crowd, scenting a 
knockout, went wild. 

“^he Diving Venus’” they volleyed. “He makes 
them dive! Dive, Jumbo, Dive!” 


358 


RING AND DIAMOND 


I cautioned Wade tc take his time. He couldn’t re- 
strain himself. Rushing in, he flailed Jumbo with both 
hands. The big fellow reeled, recovered, worked in close, 
his head bent. Putting every ounce of his waning 
strength into the blow, he shot a short uppercut to Wade’s 
jaw. 

Wade pitched forward on his face and lay there with- 
out a tremor. The silence that followed was like the 
early stillness that precedes the dawn — intense because 
of the loudness of little inconsequental sounds. A thin- 
voiced man near one of the exits spoke, as if to himself, 
but his words carried with startling distinctness through- 
out the auditorium : “No wonder they call him The Diving 
Venus!” 

Wade was inconsolable. The critics hinted that- 
there was a shade of saffron located somewhere along his 
spine. It was just possible, they intimated, that he 
earned his sobriquet in that first bout with Jumbo; some 
folk thought he dived out of the ring without being hit 
through sheer fright. Jumbo Allen’s fighting face was 
enough to scare anybody that didn’t pretend to be a ‘ 
fighter. Wade seemed waiting for a word of condemna- 
tion from me, but I deemed my disapproval neither prac- 
tically expedient nor morally requisite. 

“Give me another chance, Mr. Copeland,” he begged. 
“I don’t want to quit with them thinking Pm yellow.” 

It was easy enough getting matches for Wade. He 
was a flashy performer, a wizard with the gloves whose 
lightning coups brought irrepressible and innumerable 
“Ahs” from the spectators. And many a man who be- 
lieves a boxer the rankest kind of a quitter will pay well 
and persistently to see that same man take the count, and 
hurl vilest abuse from the safe anonymity of a vociferous 
throng. 

The softest thing I could get for Wade for his third 
professional engagement was Devil Mitchell, a grim- 
looking fighter built on battleship lines. He was j;ickled 
almost to extinction to go on with The Diving Venus. 


THE DIVING VENUS 


359 


But he said I ought to have had better sense than to se- 
lect him for the boy’s come-back. Even the unintelli- 
gent, he remarked, instinctively avoid throwing a lighted 
match into a keg of gunpowder. He could see that I was 
curiously oppressed with the futility of my plans. 

There was nothing to the fight but The Diving Venus 
for five spectacular rounds. Then it happened. Had I 
been playing the races, you might have said my horse 
led till he was breathing on the wire — and then dropped 
dead. 

The sixth round was two minutes and ten seconds 
old when Wade Denston made room for a right hand 
punch on the jaw and caved downward, void of conscious- 
ness. As he fell backward, his^ head caught on the lower 
rope. A convulsive movement enabled him to free him- 
self from the entanglement, but he did not rise. The 
referee tolled off the seconds with slow gestures of the 
arm, but when he reached “ten” The Diving Venus was 
still motionless. 

Yes, The Diving Venus! For I was now convinced 
that the name fitted a physical marvel who owned that 
abominable trait known as “the yellow streak.” To 
strengthen this belief. Devil Mitchell told me that the 
finishing blow was not delivered with all his power. He 
said he might have killed The Diving Venus by using all 
his strength, but he invariably made it a point not to ex- 
ceed the necessities of a situation. Allowing for the 
man’s egotism, I felt that the blow had not been a real 
sleep-producer, and it .'•omewhat fretted my spirit that 
Devil was not perpetually barbarous. 

When Denston’s pulse got back to its normal pitch I 
told him that I was done with him. 

“Why?” he had the nerve to ask. 

I preserved a silence more eloquent than oaths. 
After an interval of silence, during which we stared hard 
at each other, he turned suddenly, like an automatom, 
with a face as gray and as stony as granite. 


360 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“I understand,” he choked. “Fll not trouble you 
again.” 

He kept his word, too, but if he let me alone he had 
less consideration for ■‘he fight fans. Even without the 
guiding genius who had passed him up for men of truer 
mettle, he found matches as plentiful as daisies in a mid- 
summer field. And right royally did he prove that the 
name of The Diving Venus was no misnomer. He spent 
as much time lying on the fioor of rings as he did standing 
up in them. 

After I split with him I never saw him again until the 
railroad "wreck at Folksdale, and I certainly thought he 
had taken his last dive, in or out of the ring. The Cen- 
tral Limited, on which he was returning from from an en- 
gagement up the state, had gone over an embankment, 
and with several medical friends I had responded to the 
first call for help. 

We were stumbling along in the dark in the belief 
that all the injured had been cared for when I heard his 
voice. He was singing, jerkily, a popular air. 

Pinned do-wn in a pit formed by a 70,000-pound 
sleeper, with -two heavy steel bars across his chest, lay 
The Diving Venus, only his face sivible beneath the 
wreckage. We stood looking down on him with moist 
eyes till he reached the end of his song. 

“How are you?” asked Doctor McClosky, an old 
friend of mine. 

“Winded,” whispered The Diving Venus. “I had to 
sing — the pain was so damned bad !” 

“It brought us here, my boy,” said the physician. 
“We’ll have you out of here in a jiffy. Keep your cour- 
age up.” 

But he lost consciousness when the workmen started 
to dig him out by cutting the wreckage away and drilling 
the steel which covered him. All through the night, while 
a strong wind was blowing from the east and snow swirled 
out of the black skies, they worked to remove the debris. 
And I’m glad to say I worked as hard as any one of them. 


THE DIVING VENUS 


361 


while the doctors were on their knees administering stim- 
ulants. 

Just about dawn The Diving Venus opened his eyes 
and spoke: 

“How^s chances, fellows?’^ 

“Fine and dandy !“ said Doctor McCloskey heartily. 
“How are you feeling?' 

“Considerably better, thanks.” 

He didn’t speak again until he had removed the last 
bit of wreckage and called for warm blankets and a 
stretcher. I helped to lift him, and I think he recog- 
nized me, for he lifted his right hand and waved. 

Could a man who Had behaved like The Diving Venus 
own a yellow streak? No man could make me believe 
that after what I had seen with my own eyes, and I waited 
for Doctor McCloskey to come to me with his report on 
the case. 

“Most remarkable case, that boy,” he said. “He’s 
going to come out whole, too. He has two gashes on his 
chest, cuts from broken glass, bruises about the body and 
a broken jaw.” 

I’m going to pass over my first meeting with The 
Diving Venus after he was discharged from the hospital. 
It is certain that I never appeared to more vivid disadvan- 
tage than when I tried to tell him I could annihilate the 
man who even hinted that he possessed a yellow streak, 
or that I had ever cherished the nude notion of such a 
monstrous thing. 

“I simply got tired of the game,” I averred brazenly. 
“If I was still in it, Jumbo Allen wouldn’t be champion. 
But that’s a bit of news to you, isn’t it? He won the belt 
while you were in the hospital.” 

His eyebrows threatened to recede into his hair. 

“Mr. Copeland,” He said calmly, holding me in pene- 
trant survey after a first searching glance. “Do you be- 
lieve I’m yellow?” 


362 


RING AND DIAMOND 


“Can you ask that now?’" I returned, and I hope my 
voice was as reproachful as I meant it to be. “I saw what 
sort of courage yours is in the face of death itself.’^ 

“Then do me a favor,” his voice snapped like a whip. 
“Get me a fight with Jumbo Allen — be my manager 
again !’ V 

What could I do? Tell him that while I thought he 
showed sublime courage at death’s veiy door I would hesi- 
tate to pitt him against a man with padded gloves for fear 
he would betray the yellow streak? Hadn’t he proved 
himself to be a big, strong, ^deep, true he-man? And 
couldn’t he be trusted to play the man’s part when a 
bruising journey to dreamland was the worst to be antici- 
pated? The whole matter really sifted down to whether 
I lacked faith in his manhood, and he saw it even as I felt 
it. 

“I’ll not quit, Mr. Copeland,” he said quietly. “I 
have a good reason for wanting another crack at Jumbo 
Allen. Get me a fight with him, and if there is any div- 
ing done I promise that it won’t be by me.” 

“It might be a littie difficult, Wade,” I said warmly, 
thoroughly ashamed of m.y indicision, “but I’ll arrange 
the matter or die trying.” 

As it happened, Jumbo Allen had cleaned up all the 
drawing cards in his division, and not being an actor, or a 
chap to care for anything but fighting, he was rather 
pleased to discover someone willing to climb into the ring 
with him. But he balked when he learned that my man 
was The Diving Venus. 

“Not a chance for that guy, Copeland,” he said dis- 
gustedly. “Why, the only scrapper in the game who 
hasn’t put him away is Jim Melloy. You know that as 
well as I do. The bout wouldn’t draw flies, so what’s the 
use?” 

When I acquainted Wade with the champion’s de- 
cision, repeating his remarks verbatim, the boy’s eyes 
blazed. 


THE DIVING VENUS 


“It’s a case of getting a reputation then,” he sneered. 
“Get me Melloy, Mr. Copeland.” 

So I got him Melloy, and, not to drag in non-essen- 
tial details, he got Melloy. He could have won any time 
he pleased after the opening bell, but he gave the spec- 
tators a run for their money. It was one of the few 
times that The Diving Venus left a ring without living up 
to his name. 

Jumbo Allen, however, was dissatisfied. 

“There’d be only carfare in it for me now,” he 
growled. “Melloy is a dub — and he’s old. Why, a 
newspaper chap told me he held William the Conqueror’s 
horse at the battle of Hastings. There’s a youngster 
named Conway — Butch Conway — ^that’s been knocking 
’em off like ripe plums. See what your come-back can 
do with him.” 

Extremely businesciike, we made two “gets” of 
Butch Conway. Without loss of time I got Butch Con- 
wav. And Wade Denston got him with equal facility and 
dispatch. 

“What’s the matter with Spike Crawford?” demand- 
ed Jumbo, when I again asked him about a fight for Wade. 
“Can The Diving Venus fix his clock, and do it well?” 

Wade did it better than well. The fans were be- 
ginning to yell “He makes them all dive!” and Wade was 
climbing back into their good graces. They wanted to 
know if Jumbo Allen was developing arctic feet, and 
uhited in the hope that he would give the young challen- 
ger an early chance. 

¥ 

Stark necessity drove Jumbo Allen into making 
terms. He said the match was decidedly to his liking. 

“I guess the bugs want to see it now,” he raspejd. 
“I’ni almost broke anyway. I’ve nothing left but my re- 
ligion and I’m losin’ faith in that. Bring Venus to me. 
It’s goin’ to be fun.” 

Jumbo had a homely and inscrutable idea of amuse- 
ment, but his confidence in himself was unbounded. One 
need hardly fear The Diving Venus when one had twice 


364 


RING AND DIAMOND 


obliged him to perform his favorite stunt. Jumbo 
assumed am attitude of jovial hostility when he entered 
the ring. He had height, weight, reach, and the prestige 
of his title. 

If ever a boxer packing a supposedly puerile punch 
took his chances against a relentless hitter, Wade Denton 
did the night he fought the champion. He was on his 
toes all the time, and he never broke ground. He tore 
into his big opponent with much apparent recklessness 
and enthusiasm. Nine-tenths of the time he made it 
appear as though Jumbo’s muscles as well as his intellect 
were entering upon the atrophy of age. 

Wade had a contempt for the champion’s punching 
ability that was magnificent. He had the crowd with him 
because he excited the admiration that would be the por- 
tion of any circus dare-devil. Few wanted to see him hit 
the canvas, but everybo(jy was prepared to be sympathetic 
at a moment’s notice. 

Jumbo landed often enough, and there was plenty of 
snap and drive behind the blows. In the fourth round he 
dropped two left hooks on Wade’s jaw. They were short, 
solid punches, delivered with the champion stepping close 
behind the flying fist that no ounce of weight might be 
lost. They rolled off Wade’s jaw like water off a duck’s 
back. 

This prepared me for the finish when it came. The 
old Diving Venus would have crumpled under these blows 
just as I had seen him go down under lighter punches that 
landed on his jaw. But this iron-jawed youngster took 
everything on that once vulnerable spot without turning a 
hair. And despite the terrific pace he set he was as light 
and as elusive as the antic merchandise of a toy balloon 
peddler. He fairly pulsed with unhuman energy. 

When the ninth round opened it was evident to all 
that Jumbo Allen, master of ring craft, at last had met a 
man whose punches came too fast and were too much for 
him to avoid or assimilate. Wade sprang after his quarry 
like a wolf on the fold. A panic seized the champion; he 


THE DIVING VENUS 


365 


couldn’t mobilize all his wits. His state of feeling was 
best translated by his offense — or what there was left of 
it. He sent the lightest of feathery jabs at Wade, and 
they were all launched in a half-hearted manner. 

The spectators stood up to witness the end. A left 
to the chin sent Jumbo to the ropes, and he came back and 
hit the laughing Wade with four lefts. These caused him 
to gain somewhat in courage, but they were a trap that 
quickly ended the fight. As the champion started to land 
another left, Wade let drive with a right to the jaw, and it 
was all over. 

“They all dive for The Diving Venus!” yelled the 
fans, acclaiming the new champion. Still dazed by what 
I had seen I permitted myself to be jammed and jostled 
in the cheering thousands. When I extricated myself at 
last I ran into Jumbo Allen, the deposed champion, mak- 
ing his slow way unattended save by his faithful seconds 
to his dressing room. 

“Take care of tha+: lad, Copeland,” he said with an 
attempt at a smile. “It will be years before they find his 
equal. What did you do to his jaw — cement it or fill it 
in with iron?” 

I asked the new champion that very thing when I 
eventually got him alone in our rooms at the hotel. 

“Will you tell me, Wade,” said I, “how in the world 
you’re able to take piledriver blows oh that jaw of yours 
now?” Jumbo declares fervently you’re a blood brother 
to the person most eminent in Hades. 

“Well, I was in hell for a long while,” smiled Wade. 
“That was when you and rest of the world thought I had 
a yellow streak. I didn’t know what it was myself. The 
only thing I was sure of was that it wasn’t the yellow 
streak. I had never faked a knockout to avoid punish- 
ment, and I feared no man alive. That’s why I continued 
to take my medicine, unable to understand how a lot of 
dubs could knock me out after I had boxed rings around 
them. Of course it didn’t take but a few trips to dream- 
land to make me cautious — ^afraid to get in and swing 


RING AND DIAMOND 


with all I had. I feared that a miss with my mightiest 
punch would leave my jaw open, and it often did, with 
sorry results. A doctor told me I had a glass jaw. Do 
you remember the look you gave me when I told you that, 
Mr. Copeland? You, like all the rest, thought it was the 
old streak.” 

*‘F11 admit that much,” I said contritely, “but you, on 
the other hand, must acknowledge that you never men- 
tioned anything about a glass jaw after that?” 

“I wasn^t looking for an alibi.” His smile was gen- 
uine, not a mere muscular contraction. “Nevertheless, I 
had an obstruction of the glenoid cavity that made a jolt 
on the lower jaw a knockout. Dr. McCloskey discovered 
it when he repaired a broken jaw for me after the rail- 
road accident, but it seems that the break forced the ob- 
struction into a different position. It now covers and 
protects the glenoid cavity, making me practically imper- 
vious to the punch soporific. Get the doctor to explain 
the thing when you see him again.” 

“I^m going to do some explaining to the public first,” 
I announced, “and when I get through with the job the 
world will know just how you come to be called The Div- 
ing V^nus — ^with a sweeping challenge to anybody that 
doubts your ability to make ^em dive!” 






t ;-4 V 1 


<ry 








" -» 




v' .?•• 














* 


- ’pi 


,> 


% . 


N. 







f 


t 




» ' 






























